Phoenix Noir (7 page)

That was interesting; Harvey hadn’t had much time, but you don’t get a lot of random hits on a name like Howarth ap Gruffydd. He was an expert on the orchidaceae of Latin America; had written two books on orchids, contributed to botanical journals, and otherwise seemed not to have gotten his name in the media. The girl was still talking.

“I helped with the catering for the reception for him up at the Wildflower Pavilion, though, and he talked to me a little bit then.”

“Yes? What did he say, do you remember?”

She giggled, but then put a hand over her mouth, shocked at herself.

“Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to laugh! It’s just—he was talking Welsh to all the ladies; it was so cool. And he said something to me in Welsh too, and he smiled and winked so I think it was a compliment, but I don’t really
know
what he said, you know?”

A few minutes further conversation got me the information that Dr. ap G had had a temporary office behind the herb garden, to which she helpfully gave me directions.

The herb garden wasn’t hard to find. Aside from signs and the pungent smells of everything from oregano and pineapple sage to ten different varieties of mint, it was marked by a fifteen-foot turquoise metal sculpture that looked like a twisted tree trunk, until you got close enough to see that it had feet, rudimentary wings, and several openings out of which live rosemary plants were growing.
St. Earth Walking
, read a bronze plaque behind it.

“Yeah, if you say so,” I said to it, and walked up to the office building as though I owned the place.

It was empty, all the office doors locked. A board near the entrance listed the occupants; Dr. ap G’s office was near the far end of the hall. It was locked too; the cops hadn’t arrived here yet, but it wouldn’t be long. There were a few cartoons about orchids taped to the door—and seven or eight snapshots of the reception the refreshment girl had mentioned; there was an open-sided pavilion, the hills of Papago Park visible in the background.

Most of the people looked the same—round white faces with manic grins. But one open-mouthed blond laugher had a gold tooth showing—and a hand possessively on the sleeve of the Welsh botanist, who must have been telling her something side-splitting in Welsh.

Voices outside. I wanted to grab the snapshot, but I knew better than to take evidence, especially if I might get caught with it. I made it out the far door just as the one I’d come through opened.

Outside, the thick blanket of heat settled over me. I took a wrong turn and ended up panting like a dog on a path above the gardens, where five or six … things … stood like a prehistoric village. They were made of twigs and branches, twisted together and shaped into giant balls, with openings that might be doors or windows. It was getting late—the clouds over the Superstitions were black, and the mountains themselves glowed a weird, intense lavender. I stepped inside one of the balls and pulled out my cell, debating who to call.

Paulie first, to check in. My voice mail. Next, John Jara-millo. I’d called his number on my way to the gardens, and got
his
voice mail. I punched in the code to block caller-ID and tried again.

“Hello?” said a voice that didn’t sound like a Mexican gardener.

“May I speak to Mr. John Jaramillo?” I said in my best telemarketer voice, pronouncing it Jar-a-milo, rather than Har-a-meeyo.

“He’s not here. Who’s this?” Definitely a cop.

“This is Sean with Mesa Verde Time-Shares,” I said chattily. “I’ll call back later.” I pressed the button and stood still, evaporating. A hot wind was coming up, big thermals pushing the clouds up into thunderheads a half-mile high, the air underneath them rushing in to fill the space. From here, I could see a good chunk of the area where Scottsdale runs into Phoenix, urban sprawl beyond the gardens’ border.

Pam Pratt? No. My chances of getting to her before the cops did were nil.

One avenue left to try, before I adjourned to Rosita’s for a cold beer or six and a plate of chicken enchiladas. I flipped the phone open again and hit 12 on my speed dial.

The phone on the other end picked up after one ring. The only reason girls of that age don’t pick up right away is that they’re already talking to somebody else.

“Callie?”

“Uncle Tom! What’s happening?”

“I need a friend, Callie,” I said to my eldest niece. “Think you can find me someone on Facebook who knows a Chloe Eastwood?”

The morning brought several items of information: a callback from the police lab with an unofficial time of death—between 2 and 3 a.m. A discreet call to one of the original uniforms, who reluctantly told me that the adult Pratts had been at a party, which they hadn’t left until 6 a.m.; socialites had more fun than I realized. Chloe hadn’t been home either—her best friend, two houses down, was also having a party. The only people home between 2 and 3 a.m. had been Tyrone and his nanny, both asleep.

Paulie had called around to her photographer acquaintances and ended up in possession of e-mailed photos of Dr. ap G’s blowout. These not only confirmed Pam Pratt’s prior knowledge of the doctor, but yielded another nugget—an of Cooney Pratt, drink in hand, shooting daggers at the Welshman, who was in the act of slipping some sort of wild-flower, stem first, into Pam’s cleavage.

And finally, a call from Callie, with the results of her Face-book research: JRose, who was on the “friend” lists for both Callie and Chloe Pratt.

“She says she’ll meet you at the Coffee Plantation by the Shea 14,” Callie said. “You know where that is?”

“Sure. Thanks, Callie. Have you ever met this girl in person?”

“Of course not,” she said, sounding surprised. “But she likes historical fiction and her pictures are cute.”

JRose was cute in person too. A shapely redhead with big blue eyes and a breezy manner, more than willing to help out her friend Callie’s Uncle Tom. She hadn’t been at the party on the night of the murder, but would try to find out how long Chloe had been there.

“Discreetly,” I said.

“I can do discreet,” she replied, and lowered her lashes in illustration.

“You know Chloe well?”

“Not that well, but I know her f2f. She doesn’t usually go to parties like that,” she said, twirling a straw in her caramel macchiato. “She parties, but it’s mostly at the clubs. I’ve seen her now and then, with her mom. Her mom’s a coug,” she added, scornful and amused.

“Coug—what, short for cougar?”

“Rowr,”
she said, clawing one hand and showing her canines. Then laughed, her face going back to sweetness. “Older ladies, like married with kids. They go to clubs and hit on younger men. Cougs are ladies who are way too old to be wea-rin’ what they’re wearin’, and doin’ what they’re doin’.”

“What are they wearing?” I asked. My informant cupped both hands in front of her chest.

“
Big
fake boobs. And like miniskirts with no Underoos.”

“Yeah? You can tell?”

She rolled her big blue eyes at me. “Oh,
everybody
can tell! They get all drunk and fall around, and everybody’s like, ‘Oh, put it
away
!’”

This was beginning to sound entertaining.

“Chloe and her mom. They hang out, you said … like,
what
places?”

“Oh, the Devil’s North, that’s the big hangout for cougs. Or at Eli’s, down by Claimjumpers on Shea.”

“Devil’s North?” I’d heard of Eli’s, but—

“The Devil’s Martini,” she explained, and paused for a slurp of her macchiato.

“You said, ‘too old to be doing what they’re doing.’ What
are
they doing?”

“I told you,” she said promptly. “Hitting on younger men. There was this photo on
DirtyScottsdale.com
, this coug right up with this little kid celebrating his twenty-first, and the caption says,
Oh, you’re twenty-one? Well, I’m twenty-seven—I don’t think that’s too much difference, do you?”
She laughed.

“Only she was maybe
thirty-
seven! That’s just gross.”

“But there are older guys who hit on younger women in clubs, aren’t there?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Isn’t that a double standard?”

“Oh, totally,” she agreed cheerfully, and gave me a look of appraisal that was a lot older than she was. I lifted a finger for the bill, hoping
37
wasn’t flflashing on my forehead.

I’d heard of
DirtyScottsdale.com
, but hadn’t had occasion to look at the site before. It’s a do-it-yourself local tabloid covering the club scene; people take pictures of each other drunk, behaving badly, in unflattering or compromising positions, and send them to the site, usually anonymously, often with scurrilous captions.

Some of them were truly funny; some were embarrassing, like the shot of a young woman, very drunk, urinating in a parking lot. All of them were vulgar and most were kind of sad.

I found Chloe in the archives, leaning up against the wall next to a door that said
Ladies
. Her eyes were unfocused and there was a sloppy smile on her face. The tie of her halter dress had come undone—or been untied on purpose—and she was clutching the fabric to one of her breasts. The other one was left to fend for itself, and with thoughts of Callie, JRose, and girlish innocence, I paged down fast.

“Whoa.” I paged back up, even faster.

Dr. ap Gruffydd looked a lot better alive, though with the scraggly ponytail, he still wouldn’t do better than tenth runner-up in the Llangeggellyn beauty pageant. He was laughing, holding up a woman who was draped over him like a honeysuckle vine on a trellis. One of his hands cupped her butt—literally; she’d slid down him, and her short shiny red skirt had ridden up on one side, and damned if JRose hadn’t been right about the Underoos.

I called Paulie and asked her to clip the two photos and make me decent prints. They might come in handy.

I came back from lunch to find a message from Pamela East-wood Pratt. Would I meet her at 3 o’clock for a quick drink at Bloom? Mrs. Pratt had tracked me down and gotten my number pretty quick. Which also meant that she knew what I did for a living. Why would a socialite murder suspect want to talk to a journalist?

I turned the possibilities over in my mind as I drove—anything from a front-page confession to a clumsy attempt to redirect suspicion elsewhere by planting a story. Or given what I’d been finding out about Chloe, maybe an attempt to warn me away from her. I touched the pocket where I’d stashed the photos; whatever Mrs. Pratt had in mind to tell me, those might steer her closer to the truth.

Bloom is an upscale restaurant with floral stained-glass panels, circular blue-leather booths, and excellent food. It’s mobbed for lunch and dinner, but if you go between 2 and 5, you can hear yourself think. And the wine list is good.

“Mrs. Pratt,” I said, sliding into the booth opposite the lady in question.

“Call me Pamela,” she responded, making a face. “Pratt—what a godawful name.”

“Sure. Pam—”

“
Pamela
.” She smiled. “Pam is nice, and Pammy …” She waved a hand, dismissive. “Well, that says oatmeal cookies and and flannel jammies with dancing kittens. Pammy is … you know.
Beige
.”

“Whereas Pamela …” I said, obliging.

She leaned back in her chair a little, giving me the full benefit of her cleavage. She already had a glass of red wine, held carelessly by the stem.

“Oh,
Pamela
… now, Pamela says Tanqueray martini, hold the vermouth, red silk, hot jazz and hotter men, don’t bother to take your boots off at the door, and you can leave the lights on, mister, cuz I left shy behind in kindergarten.” She laughed, and I caught a glint of gold molar.

“Pamela.” I lifted my water to her, and we smiled at each other. Then she set her wine down; to business.

“I Googled you,” she said abruptly.

“That makes two of us,” I said, and she blinked, but then steadied. She’d already Googled herself; she thought there was nothing unfit for public consumption.
DirtyScottsdale.com
didn’t always have names attached to their photos; the shot of her as an anonymous cougar wouldn’t show up.

“If I say this is off the record …?” One plucked eyebrow rose.

“Then it is.”

Some people think speaking to a reporter “off the record” is like speaking to an attorney or a priest. I wouldn’t quote her. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t make use of whatever she told me.

“I want you to find my gardener.”

“What do you think I am, an employment agency?”

The cougar glinted briefly in her eyes, but she kept it on the leash.

“John Jaramillo. He’s been supplying my daughter with drugs from Mexico. Now he’s gone and I have a dead botanist in my swimming pool. Think there’s a connection there, Sherlock?”

“Yeah. Maybe not the same one you’re thinking of, though.” I took the photo out of my pocket and laid it on the table.

“Crap,” she said, sounding exactly like Tyrone. She frowned at the photo. “I
really
need to get to the gym.”

“Connection?” I prompted. “Like between you and the good doctor?”

She made a
pfft!
sound and flicked the photo back at me.

“He was better in bed than you’d think from his looks,” she said. “I hadn’t seen him since the night this was taken, though, until he turned up in my pool.”

“Right. And you don’t think the cops would like to know about this?” I tapped a finger on the photo, and the server, who was setting down my glass of Riesling, glanced at it.

“Wow,” he said. “Nice butt.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” she drawled, leaning back in her chair and giving him a laser eyeball. He glanced from the picture to her, and did a double-take.

“Is that
you
? Er … ma’am?”

“Meet me in the parking lot after work and find out.” The cougar stretched voluptuously, flexing her shiny pink claws. The server, who might have been nineteen, turned purple and fled.

She laughed, but was dead serious when she looked back at me.

“The cops know. I was rattled when he turned up in the pool, but once I had a minute to think, I realized that as soon as they identified him, they’d head for the DBG and find out I knew him. So I called them and fessed up. I didn’t know about that—” She cast a displeased glance at the photo. “And if I get my hands on the little shithead who took it—but never mind …” She waved a hand. “It’s Chloe.”