Desert Wives (9781615952267) (3 page)

Despite its charm, the Barrio could be a risky place for a leisurely drive. I kept a lead foot on the Jeep's accelerator as I drove past the graffiti-covered walls which proclaimed that the turf belonged to the Crips, the Bloods, and the West Side Chicanos. This hard-core gang territory seldom failed to lead off the ten o'clock news broadcasts.

Even more insidious, South Phoenix remained the site of too many commercial waste dumps and industrial parks. The people who lived there suffered from respiratory ailments rarely found in the rest of the valley.

South Mountain Tire Storage, with more than six hundred thousand tires destined for the state's recycling program, had long been one of the neighborhood's chief offenders. In the past couple of years, it had belched huge columns of smoke on an almost regular basis. The Environmental Protection Agency proclaimed itself not amused, but so far, the fines they levied against Dwayne Alder, the dump's owner, had not solved the problem.

As I drove into the storage yard, I could still smell burning rubber, even though the last fire had been put out three months earlier. The stench emanated from the three-story-high mound of tires known sarcastically by the locals as Black Mountain. The smelly heap did not appear all that stable, either, and looked as if it would topple over any minute. I was just thinking that I would make this visit as brief as possible when a nasty-looking Rottweiler the size of a Shetland pony trotted from behind a mound of bald Firestones to greet me with bared fangs.

“What a good dog,” I said hopefully, remaining in my Jeep while awaiting rescue. “And what nice, sharp teeth you have.”

Good Dog informed me in his rumbly voice that he hoped to use them on me, but his hopes were dashed when a middle-aged man sporting a belly the size and shape of a bowling ball exited the single-wide used as the dump's office. The man's face had been so burnt by the sun that it almost matched his red hair and scrawny beard.

“Ringo, sit!”

Ringo sat, although he did not look happy about it. I climbed out of the Jeep, giving him a wide berth. His eyes followed my every move.

The man studied my Jeep with the same amount of beady fascination as Ringo studied me. Not long ago, some of Jimmy's relatives had decorated the Jeep with a series of Pima story-telling designs, and now the entire history of the Pima Indians marched across its hood, doors, and rear. A set of steer horns mounted on the hood finished off the Jeep's fashion statement.

“I'm Lena Jones, the private detective,” I said, when the man finally faced me again. “If you're Dwayne Alder, we've already talked on the phone.”

His eyes gave me the usual lustful once-over, then stopped when they reached my face. I was used to it. I had been told that the one-inch-long scar from the bullet that had almost killed me was the only flaw in an otherwise perfect set of features. The scar could have been removed in one short visit to any plastic surgeon, but I'd chosen to keep it, hoping that someone might eventually recognize it and tell me my real name. You see, the name I use is not really mine. It had been given to me thirty years earlier by a particularly unimaginative social worker.

“Are you Mr. Alder?” I tried again.

“Yeah, yeah, that's me,” he said, finally shifting his eyes away from my forehead. “Call me Dwayne. C'mon, let's get inside the office before we fry. Ringo, you stay.”

Ringo whined, but sat obediently in the shade of the tires.

It was much cooler inside and the purple faux leather chairs surprisingly comfortable, but the reek of burnt rubber that blended with the smell of stale tobacco kept my breaths shallow.

“I'm here about your son,” I said. “Your neighbors aren't too happy with him.”

“I don't care about the neighbors. Miles is a good boy.”

He shifted around on his chair as if fleas bit his butt, and plucked nervously at his scrawny red beard. “Sure, Miles got hisself into some trouble years back, but he was runnin' with a rough crowd then.”

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the parent of some felonious teen blame it on his friends, I would be skiing in Switzerland right now, not melting in the Arizona heat.

“Two stints at Adobe Mountain Correctional Facility aren't exactly a little trouble, Mr. Alder. And as for that rough crowd you say corrupted your son, my sources maintain that Miles was the ringleader. Whatever mischief they perpetrated, he initiated. It's time to face facts and get that kid some help, because he's not going to recover from his attraction to fire without it. Now, I know the ATF hasn't been able to come up with enough evidence for an arrest, but don't you think you have a moral obligation to your community? Every time that dump goes up, hundreds of little babies suck in lungs full of toxic fumes.”

Alder hitched his pants. “Yeah, that's too bad, but there ain't nothing I can do about it.”

“Couldn't you get Miles another job? Some place where he wouldn't be exposed to, ah, flammables?”

More beard-plucking. “Like flipping burgers at MacDonald's or something? The kid's gotta learn how to run the business. My health ain't so good. Emphysema. I'm going to have to retire pretty quick now.”

“You don't have any other children?”

“Two girls. Why?”

“How about training one of them to take over?”

Alder looked at me like I'd just grown two heads. “Let a girl run a tire dump?”

I tried not to sigh. “Better a girl than a firebug. Look, Mr. Alder, in a day and age where women fly the Space Shuttle, I think with the proper training one of your daughters might be able to run this place.”

Yep, I'd grown two heads, all right. “I don't need you to be telling me how to raise my family, sister. Miles stays.”

My sigh finally escaped. “So you refuse to do anything about your son?”

“I don't need to do nothing about that boy. He'd be fine if people would just stop leanin' on him. Now you go on back to them Citizens for Clean Air fools and tell them to mind their own business. Maybe they ought to be looking at their own kids, cause it sure ain't my Miles been settin' these fires. Now, it's been awful nice talking to a pretty lady but I got me a ton of work to do here.”

Just then a young man entered the office, Ringo slobbering happily at his heels. Miles. I recognized him from the news reports, where, in typical firebug behavior, he always bellied up to the camera to hold forth about the fires. It was easy to see how he'd become the apple of his dad's eye. Where Alder looked and sounded like the product of a hard-scrabble upbringing, Miles, with his designer hair, broad shoulders, and even features, could have posed for a Ralph Lauren ad. But I thought his blue eyes were just a trifle too steady. Con man eyes.

Since reason hadn't worked with the father, I doubted its effectiveness with the son. I decided on a more direct approach. “Listen, you little shithead. The neighbors are tired of the fires. They want you to stop.”

Miles smirked. “Why, ma'am, I honestly don't know what you're talking about.”

“Yes, you do, and I'm telling you right now, if those fires don't stop, I'm going to be all over your butt like a bad pair of pants until your firebug ass gets locked up permanent. And, Miles? Now that you're eighteen, you're too old for Juvie. The next time you go down it'll be to the State Correctional Facility in Florence where the big boys live. You'll be the sweetest piece of ass they've seen in a long time.”

The blue eyes blinked rapidly, then shifted to his father.

“Pop?” Miles whined, now sounding decidedly non-Lauren-esque. “Are you going to let her talk to me this way?”

Dad rushed to his baby's rescue. “You got no call to talk to my boy like that! Get the hell out of here!”

I nodded, but directed a parting shot to Miles. “Remember what I said, little boy. One more fire and you'd better start stocking up on K-Y Jelly.”

When I stood to leave, Ringo, who had been lying adoringly at his master's feet, stood too. He looked at my own butt, perhaps envisioning a rare rump roast for dinner. Miles' eyes flicked toward his dog.

“If that dog bites me I'll shoot it first and ask questions later.” I punctuated my words by patting the carry-all that served as my purse. A
thunk
revealed my .38's presence. Like so many Arizonans, I was licensed to carry.

My threat worked.

“Ringo, sit,” Papa Alder ordered.

I made it to the Jeep in one piece.

Back at the office, things had slowed down. Jimmy had spent the day running background checks for the semiconductor company, and he had narrowed the thief down to three suspects, all of whom had criminal records.

“I don't know why employers don't do this themselves,” he said. “Just think of all the money they'd save.”

“They don't do it because they're not as good as you are, Slick.”

Jimmy snorted. “It's so easy a child…”

“…could do it,” I finished for him. Yeah, sure, a child with an I.Q. of 156, who'd grown up playing with computers the way other children played with Matchbox cars.

He pushed away from his keyboard and faced me. I had noticed long before that his tribal tattoos tended to darken when he was worried, and they looked almost black now.

“Lena, those guys from Utah. I don't like that they traveled all the way down here.”

I nodded. “I'm worried, too. I told Esther to take a trip somewhere, anywhere, but I'm betting she won't. She has this ridiculous belief in Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”

“What's so ridiculous about that?”

I snorted. Recently, a Maricopa County judge had forcibly returned a fourteen-year-old AIDS patient from Arizona, where she lived with a beloved aunt, to Minnesota to live in an adult AIDS shelter. Why? Because her father, who stayed in a Minnesotan rehab center after his release from a stretch in prison for child neglect, wanted closer access to his daughter. Following a long tradition in the addled Arizona court system, the judge decided that parental rights superseded the rights of the child, regardless of how sleazy the parent. Truth? Justice? The American Way? Not for Arizona's children.

But I simply said to Jimmy, “If those Utah cops catch up with Esther, she'll be extradited to Utah before you can say Brigham Young.”

Jimmy turned back to his computer without saying a word.

Two hours later, my prediction came true. As I was closing up the office, the phone rang. It was Esther Corbett, calling me from the Scottsdale City Jail, where she was being held pending extradition to Utah.

For the murder of Solomon Royal.

Chapter 3

Under the glare of the cell's harsh light, Esther Corbett looked ten years older. No trace of the glow that had been painted across her face when I had returned her daughter to her a week earlier remained. Unhealthy shadows crept into the hollows under her cheekbones and eyes.

“Lena, you have to do something,” she rasped at me, her voice raw, probably from crying. “Rebecca's father is driving down from Utah to take her back to Purity.” She clutched at my hand as if we were mountain climbers and her safety line had broken. I'd have bruises tomorrow.

“At least Rebecca's safe for now,” I said, tapping my notebook, where I'd written down the address and phone number where the girl was now staying. “Your ex-husband doesn't have custody, so we've got some time to maneuver.”

Esther had told me that when she had seen the police car pull up in front of her rented house, she'd sent Rebecca out the back door with her roommate. The roommate had taken the girl to a friend's house, but warned that the arrangement could only be temporary. Another place had to be found for Rebecca or she'd wind up with Child Protective Services.

Esther shook her head. “The legal system in Beehive County is a mess, Lena. Abel filed a motion there last week, and since I didn't respond to the summons the court served on me, the judge actually awarded him custody by default!”

I hid my alarm. The whole thing flew in the face of the Uniform Child Custody Agreement recognized by every state, but weirder things have happened. Rebecca was in trouble, all right.

“Lena, I don't have money for bail or to drag this extradition thing out like you told me to over the phone. They'll probably send me back to Utah right away where you know I'll never get a fair trial. The polygamists
own
the courts there. And Rebecca, now that Solomon's dead, she's already half-forgotten how bad it was at the compound. She keeps talking about how many friends she made in just the short time she was there. I'm afraid…”

She chewed her lip so hard that a bright spot of blood appeared. “Lena, I'm afraid they're going to get to her.”

“Get to her? What do you mean?”

Esther's eyes, which despite her distress had been dry, now teared up. “The men in Purity, even the women, they have their ways. They talk to you, they tell you things, they confuse you. They did it to me when I was growing up. They convinced me that marrying the man they ordained was God's will and that if I resisted, I'd go to Hell. I saw grown women so afraid of that threat that they married men they couldn't stand. Oh, Lena! Rebecca's just a child!”

I remembered Rebecca's face when we discovered Prophet Solomon's body. The man who'd been about to rape her was dead, and yet she reacted with an odd mixture of grief and guilt. Had the brainwashing Esther described already taken hold?

It wouldn't help Esther to know that I shared her fears, so I kept my worries to myself. “Look, first thing we do, we'll hire a good attorney. You'll need one here in order to stop the extradition process.”

Frustration crossed Esther's face. “I don't have any money left. I used everything I had for the custody case.”

No surprise there. Esther's had been yet another pro bono case for Desert Investigations. In fact, I worked so many pro bonos that Jimmy was in danger of being our company's only moneymaker. Not that it mattered. Unlike most detective agencies, we had an angel. Desert Investigations existed due to the financial goodwill of Albert Grabel, the Scottsdale computer magnate whose innocent son I had managed to get out of prison while I'd still worked for the Scottsdale Police Department. When Grabel heard I'd opened my own agency, he promised to finance the cases of others I believed were unjustly accused.

Grabel's largess didn't necessarily extend to exorbitant attorney's fees, though. If we left Esther's extradition case to a public defender, she would be Utah-bound in a heartbeat. Fortunately, Grabel was not the only person in Scottsdale who owed me.

But first, I had to get my client to tell me the truth for a change. “Esther, what kind of case do the Utah authorities have against you?”

“Nothing but lies.” She lowered her eyes and pretended to find something of interest on the cell floor.

I waved her own lie away. “When Rebecca and I got back to the motel, I noticed that your car was covered in dust. You drove out to the compound, didn't you?”

She shook her head, but kept her eyes lowered.

I grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look at me. “Esther, I'm on your side, remember? But I can't help you if you don't tell me everything. That includes your movements while Jimmy and I were waiting outside the compound.”

Her eyes filled with tears again. “All right, all right. Yes. I drove out there.”

“And?”

“And nothing.” She jerked her chin away. “What did you expect me to do, Lena? You'd been gone for days and I was desperate to see my daughter!”

“When was this?”

She looked away. “The same day you brought her to the motel. Around dinner time.”

I tried not to groan. “Tell me exactly what you did and what you saw.”

She met my eyes again. Now I was going to get the truth. “I hid my car in a stand of creosote bushes about a mile away from the compound and hiked down into the canyon. I thought I might even run into you, but I guess you were over in the other direction.”

I nodded. I'd camped far enough back into the twenty-mile-long canyon to make discovery difficult. But Esther had placed herself right at the murder scene. Could her situation have been any worse?

She must have seen the consternation on my face. “All I wanted was just a glimpse of Rebecca, Lena. You'd told me how dangerous it would be if I tried to grab her myself.”

“You ran into Solomon, didn't you?”

The tears came back. “Yes,” she whispered.

Only the pain in her eyes kept me from screaming at her in frustration. “Tell me what happened. Don't leave anything out.”

“We…we argued.”

“I'll bet you did. Give me the gory details.”

Her voice trembled but she managed to maintain control. “He was out hunting with two other men, and when I saw him walking along like that, looking so self-satisfied and arrogant, knowing that he wanted my daughter, what he was going to do to her, I…I just lost it.”

“How badly did you lose it?” I had visions of Esther wresting the shotgun away from old Solomon and giving him both barrels in the chest. It was probably what I'd do if Rebecca had been my daughter.

“I started screaming at him, calling him all sorts of names. I told him he'd marry Rebecca over my dead body. It became ugly enough that he told the other men to leave us alone. I think he was afraid of what I might say. About him. About Purity.”

I thought about this for a minute. “And did they leave you two alone?”

She nodded. “They went further up the canyon, in the direction of Zion City. But not so far that I couldn't hear them stomping around in the brush.”

I pulled my pen and notebook out of my carry-all. “Give me the men's names. They'll probably be called as witnesses, so we need to be prepared.” I waited expectantly.

Nothing.

“Esther?”

Her lower lip quivered. “Earl Graff was one of them. We never got along.”

I jotted the name down. “And the other man?”

“My father.”

I sat up straight. “Your father? That's good, then. He won't want to testify against you.”

She shook her head miserably. “Before my father left me with the prophet, he called me the Whore of Babylon.”

Not so good. “Your father called you the Whore of Babylon and then he and that other guy, Earl Graff, left you and Solomon alone. What happened next?”

She didn't say anything for a second, then finally took a deep breath. “I called him a pedophile. He slapped me. I started crying and ran back to my car.”

I frowned. “Do you think the other men heard him hit you?”

She shrugged. “What if they did? Women get slapped around all the time up there. It's how the men keep them in line.”

I frowned. The story sounded reasonable, more or less. I would have liked to learn the real reason Solomon had sent the two men away, but the hard edge in Esther's voice told me the interview was over. Still, for all the holes in her story, I doubted if Esther had killed Solomon. If she had, Graff and her father would have heard the shotgun blast and nabbed her on the spot. Then they might have indulged themselves in a little Wild West justice. The kind with a rope.

I put my notebook away and prepared to make my exit. Forcing a smile, I patted her hand. “Don't worry. I'll make sure you have a damned good attorney before Abel gets down here. We'll have your ex-husband so tied up in red tape on this custody and extradition business that he'll look like Houdini.”

Hope leapt into her eyes. “Do you really believe you can prevent Rebecca from being forced back to Utah?”

“I know I can.”

I'm such a liar.

Jimmy had left for the semiconductor plant again when I arrived back at Desert Investigations, so I rushed straight to my desk and began making phone calls. I soon discovered that I'd forgotten that Scottsdale's rich and famous tended to flee our hideous heat every summer to hole up in cooler places, such as London or Copenhagen. But after an hour of punching in numbers, I finally hit pay dirt.

Serena Hyath-Allesandro, one of the Valley's richest women, remained in town. She had just been released from rehab with her doctor's warning not to dance the European tango with the fast crowd she usually danced with. Even though I had recently been involved in a murder case which devastated her family, Serena and I had nonetheless developed a wary friendship.

“Polygamy?” she breathed at me over the phone, her voice as thin as Arizona's ozone layer. “In this day and age? Surely you can't be serious.”

I told her that I was very serious indeed, and brought her up to date on Esther's case. When I reached the part about Rebecca's possible return to Purity, I could almost hear her spine stiffen.

“Well, that's simply not to be allowed,” she said, her voice firmer. “Tell you what. I'm on the board of My Sister's House, a shelter for victims of domestic abuse, and another board member, Ray Winfield, you know him, he's the attorney who got Craig Merryweather off when he was accused of murdering that topless dancer. Ray and I…” She let the sentence trail off, but I could have finished it for her. According to the society pages, Ray Winfield and Serena had become an item, and rumors floated around town that they would marry as soon as her divorce from her third Eurotrash husband came through. “I can promise you that Ray will be down at the jail in less than an hour.”

When Serena Hyath-Allesandro said she would do something, it was as good as done, so I thanked her and hung up. For a moment I sat looking out the window, just thinking about families and the trouble they could get into.

“Lena? Lena?” Jimmy's voice snapped me out of my reverie. He'd returned while I'd been on the phone with Serena. “How's Esther?” The look on his face hinted at more than concern, and I realized that my soft-hearted partner had fallen for yet another client.

“Her ex-husband is coming down from Utah to take Rebecca back with him. The kid's with a friend of Esther's roommate right now, but it's just a matter of time before she's handed over to CPS or her father. I think Esther's more worried about that than the murder charge.”

Jimmy's tribal tattoos darkened. He loathed the prospect of returning Esther to Purity as much as I did. No surprise there. Pimas respected women, and their culture vilified the seduction of young girls.

Then a small smile tugged at the edge of his mouth, and the tattoos lightened. “You know, Pima land is sovereign territory. We have our own police, our own court system.”

I frowned. “Your point being?”

His smile broadened. “My point being that Utah couldn't pick up so much as a stray dog from Pima land, let alone a little girl spending some time with her Pima friends.”

I got it. “Which Pima friends?”

“Oh, let's say for instance her dear friend Tiffany Sisiwan, who just happens to be my niece. Utah shows up at Tiffany's house, well, Tiffany's dad will get real irritated and show Utah the quickest way off the rez. Maybe even at gunpoint.”

I smiled back at him. “Jimmy, you are the most underhanded noncriminal I know. I can't begin to tell you how much I admire you for it.”

Thought being father to the deed, Jimmy immediately called his brother and explained the situation, while I called Esther's roommate and told her what we planned to do. Within minutes, Curtis Sisiwan and his wife were on their way to pick up Rebecca.

Rebecca's safety now guaranteed, Jimmy returned to his computer. Exhausted after flying in the face of so many child custody laws, I tried to relax by watching a herd of sunburned tourists exit a chartered bus and begin strolling along the neighboring art galleries on Main Street. It was something like watching the buffalo roam, except that tourists moved with less purpose. They drifted, sweating, into one gallery and out the other, emerging with bad paintings of Italian-looking “Indians” and plaster statues of howling coyotes.

I understood why Scottsdale was considered an Eden in the midst of winter, when as the rest of the country shivered in sub-zero temperatures, we barbequed by the pool. But in summer? Why on earth would someone from cool, shady Minnesota visit Arizona, where asphalt had been known to melt as early as May?

This conundrum cleared my mind wonderfully, and so I began to relax, my eyes following the tourists until they climbed back onto the bus.

Jimmy began straightening his desk. “I think I'll head over to Curtis's house. Anything you want me to tell Rebecca while I'm there?”