Hour of the Hunter (41 page)

Not only for Diana Ladd, but also for Myrna Louise. As of now, she was on his list twice over.

It pissed him off that she'd got away clean like that, but he'd get even for that eventually. His main problem now was one of time. How long before she would open the trunk and discover what was in it? If she did that, maybe she'd turn him in after all. He'd have to move forward, probably a whole lot faster than planned.

Standing there waffling back and forth, he was startled by a knock on the door. His heart went to his throat. Damn!

The gun was still in the car along with Myrna Louise.

"Yes?" he called.

"Police," a voice answered.

His hands trembled as he went to open the door. As soon as he did so, he shoved his hands in his pockets. The two uniformed cops he had seen earlier stood outside, both holding clipboards.

Carlisle concentrated on keeping his voice neutral and calm. "What seems to be the trouble, Officer?"

"We're investigating the broken gate," one of them said. "A car smashed through it. Next it took off and bashed the El Camino across the street. You came not long after that. Did you happen to see anything out of the ordinary?"

Carlisle shook his head. "Nope," he said. "I didn't see a thing."

The cops apologized for disturbing him and left. It took a while for his breathing to settle back down, to get his mind back to the problem at hand. First and foremost, he thought, he had to have another car.

Focused on solving that one problem, he prepared to leave his storeroom, but first he rummaged around until he found the bulky box that contained not only his first draft of Savage, but Garrison Ladd's manuscript as well.

It was a good thing that hotshot detective had never found either one.

Carrying the box, he locked the door and walked toward the street. The cops waved to him as he passed, but that was all. They didn't really notice him, and he was careful to do nothing that would attract their attention.

In his search for Andrew Carlisle's mother, Detective Farrell had struck out completely. The apartment complex in Peoria where Myrna Louise Taylor had been living at the time of her son's trial was such a transient place that it turned out to be a total dead end. She had evidently moved on from there more than three years earlier.

The manager had been on duty for only six months. The complex's group memory didn't stretch back any further than that.

Stymied and discouraged, Farrell trudged back to his car where the steering wheel, door handles, and seats were all too hot to touch. He turned on the car's air-conditioning full blast, but it made very little headway. Gingerly fingering the controls on his radio, he called in to check for messages.

There were several, but the only one he paid any attention to was from Ron Mallory. The assistant superintendent at the Arizona State Prison was anxious to keep his cushy job. He was doing everything possible to cooperate with Farrell's investigation.

Instead of heading straight out of town, Farrell drove to Metro Center, the nearest air-conditioned mall, and went inside to use a pay phone.

"What's up?" he asked when he finally had Ron Mallory on the line.

"I've got a name for you," Mallory said. "I had to ask more than once, but when I finally got his attention, Carlisle's ex-cellmate came up with his mother's new last name, Spaulding. It was something else before that. She remarried a year or two ago."

"Anything else besides last name? Location maybe?

Husband's first name?"

"Sorry. The last name was all I could dredge out of this guy. I was lucky to get that much."

"You're right," Farrell agreed. "it is progress. I can't expect the whole case to be handed to me on a silver platter."

Myma Louise made it home in one piece. That in itself was no small miracle. She got the hang of steering fairly well, although she tended to run over curbs going around corners. Her worst problem was keeping steady-enough pressure on the gas pedal. She constantly sped up and slowed down. For the last sixty miles, she held her breath for fear of running out of gas. She didn't dare go to a gas station and turn off the motor. What if she couldn't get it started again? All she could think of was how much she wanted to be home, safe in her own little house.

If God got her home all in one piece, she promised, she'd never ask him to do anything for her again.

Chapter Sixteen

AS DIANA AND Davy returned home from San Xavier, Fat Crack's tow truck was parking in the front drive. Diana was momentarily concerned about the presence of a strange vehicle, but Davy was ecstatic when he caught sight of Rita. He was ready to leap from the car well before it stopped.

"Be very gentle with her, Davy," Diana cautioned. "She had surgery, you know. She has stitches, too."

"On her head?"

"No, on her tummy."

"I'll be careful," Davy promised, scurrying toward the truck. Reaching the door just as Fat Crack handed Rita down, Davy stopped short, daunted at first by the huge Indian's presence. Then, remembering who the man was, he stepped forward. "Hi," he said shyly to Fat Crack.

Davy's first instinct was to throw himself at Rita, but remembering his mother's warning, he hung back until Rita raised her good arm and beckoned him to her. He hugged her gingerly around the waist while she patted the top of his head. The gesture activated his "On" switch.

With a grin, he jumped away from her and pointed to the shaved spot on his head.

"See my stitches?" he boasted. "How many do you have?

Can I see them?"

Rita smiled and shook her head. "No, you can't see them, and neither can I. I'm too fat." She laughed, and so did Fat Crack.

During this exchange, Fat Crack pulled several loaded hospital-issue plastic bags from the truck. "I'll take these inside," he said.

Fat Crack went on ahead. Rita limped after him with Davy holding tightly to her good hand. Diana waited at the front door, holding it open. "Welcome home," she said.

"Thank you."

There was a strange formality between the two women, as though neither knew quite how to behave in the presence of Rita's blood kin. "Do you want him to take your things out back?" Diana asked.

Rita nodded. "I'll go, too. I want to rest."

Davy started to follow her, but Diana called him back.

"You and the dog go outside and play," she said. "Rita's tired."

His face fell in disappointment, but Rita came to Davy's rescue. "It's okay. They can both come along. I missed them."

Despite DuShane's ass-chewing, Brandon still hung around the office.

He wanted to be there in case his mother called, and he didn't want to miss any messages from Geet Farrell. He took the time to read the Arizona Sun cover to cover, including both the brief account of Toby Walker's ill-fated joy-riding incident, and the much longer front-page article about the brutal stabbing of Johnny Rivkin, a well-known Hollywood costume designer, knifed to death in his downtown Tucson hotel room.

Brandon read about the bloody Santa Rita murder with a professional's interest in what was going on, to see what his competition at Tucson PD was doing on the case. He routinely read about homicides committed in the city in case something in the killer's MO coincided with one of his unsolved county cases. In this instance, nothing rang a bell.

Several times he was tempted to call Diana Ladd to check on how she was doing, but each time he reconsidered. He'd been summarily thrown out of the woman's house both times he'd been there. She wasn't exactly keeping the welcome mat out for him. Brandon Walker knew he was a dog for punishment, but Diana Ladd dished out more abuse than even he was willing to take.

Every time he thought about that exasperating woman.

he shook his head. He wanted so much to make her see reason, to help her understand the error of her ways. It was crazy for her to hole up in that isolated fortress of hers and wait for disaster to strike.

Supposing her idea did work. Supposing Andrew Carlisle showed up, and she somehow managed to blow him away. What would happen then? Maybe Carlisle would be dead; but so might she.

Whatever the outcome, Walker was convinced an armed confrontation would irreparably harm Davy.

Diana didn't realize that her son was a fragile child, Brandon decided.

Women always thought their male offspring tougher than they were in actual fact. Davy needed something from his mother, something he wasn't getting.

Brandon couldn't tell quite what it was, but he sat there thinking about it, wishing he could help.

Gradually, as time passed, a plan began to form in his mind. He would help, after all, whether or not Diana Ladd wanted him to, whether or not she even knew it. As soon as Brandon got off work that afternoon, he would take the county car home, borrow his mother's, stop by the hospital long enough to check on his parents, and then head out for Gates Pass. He'd lie in wait outside Diana's house all night long if necessary. If Andrew Carlisle actually showed up out there, he'd run up against something he didn't expect an armed cop rather than some wild-eyed latter-day Annie Oakley packing a loaded .45.

In fact, the more Brandon Walker thought about the idea, the better he liked it. As a cop, he had behaved responsibly in doing what he could to talk Diana Ladd out of her foolhardy scheme. But since she was too hardheaded to give up, Walker would use her as a magnet to draw Andrew Carlisle to him. Diana might be the tender morsel necessary to lure Carlisle into the snare, but Brandon Walker would be the steel-jawed trap.

Diana went into the kitchen to fix herself a glass of iced tea. The one dusty box she had carried in from the root cellar still sat on the kitchen table. Diana looked at the box and sighed. "There's no time like the present," she said aloud, quoting one of Iona's old maxims.

Squaring her shoulders, she found a butcher knife and attacked the aging layers of duct tape that sealed the box shut. The labeling may have been done by Francine, her stepmother, but the profligate use of duct tape was Max's specialty. Diana remembered the stack of boxes he had brought down to the car on the morning she left for school in Eugene.

Some of the other girls in her class had got real cedar chests for high school graduation, "hope chests" they called them. When Max came with the boxes, Diana had no idea what they were.

"Those aren't mine," she said. "I can't take all that stuff."

"Your mother says you're taking it," Max said sourly.

She left, taking the boxes with her. It wasn't until she was unpacking in her tiny apartment over the garage that she discovered Iona had made a hope chest for her, too, one in cardboard not cedar, but with hand embroidered tea towels and napkins, crocheted doilies and tablecloths, a brand-new service-for-four set of Safeway-coupon Melmac dishes, and a heavy hand-pieced quilt. There were a few pots and pans, some cheap silverware, and a brand-new percolator.

Opening each box was an adventure, a reprise of a dozen Christmas mornings. Cloth goods were neatly ironed and folded, the edges crisp and straight. Glassware--there was even some of that-was individually wrapped in store bought tissue paper.

One at a time, as she took out each item and admired each bit of handiwork, Diana wondered how and when her mother had managed to amass such a treasure without arousing Diana's suspicions. After opening the last box, she rode her bike over to the Albertsons' and called home from the grocery-store pay phone.

"What's wrong?" Max demanded when he heard her voice. "Long distance calls cost money. Did you get in a car wreck, or what?"

"Nothing's wrong," Diana told him. "Just let me talk to Mom."

But when Iona came on the phone, Diana was so overcome with emotion that she could barely speak. "When did you have time to make all that stuff, Mom? It's wonderful, but how did you do it?"

For years, Diana kept her mother's answer buried in the furthest reaches of her memory. Now, it came back to her.

"Love always makes time," Iona had said.

Remembering those words now left Diana awash m a sea of guilt. Love always makes time. Measured against her mother's performance, Diana's relationship with Davy seemed a gigantic failure. She was too busy with her own concerns and ambitions to pay attention to Davy's day-to-day needs. Stung by guilt, she was still so busy justifying her continued survival in the face of both her mother's death and her husband's suicide that she forgot to pay attention to the quality of that survival. Luckily for her and for Davy, Rita was there to take up the slack.

I'll do better, Diana promised herself. If I live long enough, I swear I'll do better.

She peeled the final layer of tape from the box, releasing the lid. In moments, Diana went from remembering her cardboard "hope chests" to what could only be called hopeless chests, from boxes filled with promise to ones packed with crushed dreams and dashed hopes. That's all Iona Dade Cooper's boxes contained.

All the while the unopened boxes sat stored in the root cellar, Diana had imagined them packed with her mother's few prized possessions, the treasures arranged with the same loving care Iona had used to pack the boxes she sent to Eugene. Except these boxes held no treasures. What was stowed there hardly qualified as personal effects.

Francine Cooper had gone through her new husband's house, Iona's house, packing up only what she didn't want-the inconvenient onion chopper with its broken blade, the battered metal pie tins Iona used only as a last resort when the season's current crop of fruit-pumpkin in the fall, mincemeat in the winter, rhubarb in the spring, and fresh peach in the summer-had swamped her supply of goods Pyrex pie plates. There were ragged hot pads and oven mitts, not the good ones Iona had used for company meals and church dinners, but the old ones she had used only for canning, and that, by rights, should have been thrown out with the trash long before they were stuffed into boxes.

Resolutely now, Diana ripped open the tape on each succeeding box. One rattled ominously as soon as she picked it up. At the bottom of that one, she found the smashed remains of the only really nice thing Iona Dade Cooper had ever owned-a Limoges salt-and-pepper-shaker set she had inherited from her own Grandma Dade-clattered brokenly around in the bottom of the box without even a paper towel as protection against breakage.