Red Hot Murder: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (13 page)

“Boomer can’t lift any prints off the gas can.” Merry Belle stood to make her pronouncement as soon as Paavo entered the office. “He tried, but said they were all smudged. I think he made things worse by trying, if that’s possible.”

“Take it away from him and send it to Phoenix.” Paavo had had it with the incompetence in the sheriff’s department. “If there’s any evidence on it, we need to know.”

“You’re right.” Her round face scrunched into a frown. She hesitated, then dropped back into her chair as her entire demeanor took on a weary, almost defeated air. “Smith, can we start over?” Her voice was uncertain.

“What do you mean?”

“Sit down and listen.” The words were bossy as ever, but the tone softer. Something in her eyes made him curious enough to do as she requested. “I know I come on strong. I’m not big on outside cops interfering with my work.”

“I understand,” he said. No cop likes outsiders poaching, not even if they are other cops.

She nodded, and continued in what was for her a muted manner. “I got two people dead, and now an old woman got knocked around. Too much old nasty stuff is coming to the surface.”

Paavo waited.

“This isn’t easy to say, San Francisco.” This time, there was no sarcasm in the nickname. She took a deep breath then added, “I could use help. Another professional. You’re a good homicide cop. I checked.”

Merry Belle’s look of embarrassment almost made Paavo smile. It figured she had vetted him, but for the first time, she did something right. She needed help. The question was, could he trust her?

“I’d like to help, but …”

“I know, I know,” Merry Belle interrupted. “You think I’m corrupt.” The sheriff allowed herself a sly smile. “I may do favors for campaign contributors—as a courtesy, you understand—but that’s all.” She went on in a firm voice. “I’m not bought and paid for. Don’t ever think that.”

To his surprise, Paavo believed her. This bellicose woman seemed to have her own goofy set of ethics.

“Look, I took this job because I needed work and nobody else wanted it. Besides, I knew more about being a cop than any ten men in town put together. I watch every police procedure show on TV, including the ones from the BBC, and every episode of CSI no matter where it takes place—New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Nome. Hell, I even wrote and told them they should put a show
right here in Jackpot.” Her plain features softened, her voice lowered. “I can roust drunks and testosterone-laden teenagers with the best of them, but I never expected to deal with murders in Jackpot.”

Paavo relented, although a part of him enjoyed Merry Belle’s discomfort. Doc would probably say she was eating huge slices of humble pie. “I’ll be glad to work with you.”

“I appreciate that,” Merry Belle said, hastily adding, “it’ll be purely unofficial.”

“However you want to play it. And I’ve got something here for us to start with.” He then took out the note he’d found in his pocket, holding just one corner, and laid it on her desk. It was block printed which was considered one of the easiest ways for a person to disguise his or her handwriting. “Someone slipped this note in my jacket. I don’t know when. In this warm climate, I spend more time carrying the jacket around than wearing it.”

Her eyes widened as she read the note. “Someone is trying to warn you off the investigation,” she murmured, and he could tell it rankled her that no one was trying to warn
her
off as well.

“It seems to be saying that Ned’s death was revenge for Hal’s murder,” Paavo suggested.

“That’s right!” Her round face lit up brighter than a full moon. “And who’d want revenge … except his son! It’s telling us Joey killed Ned!”

“I’m not so sure,” Paavo said. “Look at the grammatical mistake on the note—it shows
y-o-u-r
rather than
y-o-u
-apostrophe-
r-e.
Any ideas who might make that kind of mistake? I’m not sure Joey Edwards would,” he said.

“Mistake?” She studied the note. “Uh …”

He didn’t pursue it. “Let’s bag this, then I’d like you to send it to a crime lab in Phoenix for a fingerprint analysis.” To emphasize his point he added, “Don’t let Buster touch it.”

“Thank the good Lord you got back!” Lionel panted, more red-eyed and scraggly than usual. He met Angie as she pulled into a parking area at the guest ranch. “Clarissa’s raising holy hell.”

“Why’s that?” Angie asked.

“’Cause you ain’t here, that’s why!” Lionel exclaimed. “And the cookout’s in three days. Miss High ’n’ Goddamn Mighty wants you to give me your list of supplies.”

Lionel and Clarissa’s concerns were the last thing Angie cared about at this point. Maritza was still in a coma. Doc had insisted that Angie and Lupe go home while he and Teresa kept the vigil. And Paavo had to leave to work with Merry Belle and Buster.

Before each went their separate ways, however, they had gathered together at the cemetery for a brief but tearful prayer for Ned, and to put flowers on his fresh grave. The emotion at the grave site had been heartbreaking.

“It’s late, and I’m tired.” Angie stifled a yawn. She was emotionally and physically exhausted. “Doesn’t Clarissa know what happened today?”

“You mean about Maritza going nuts and trying to burn down her restaurant?”

“I doubt that’s the real story.”

“Whatever.” Lionel grimaced. “You don’t think Superbitch cares about that, do you?” Angie won
dered if Clarissa had scared Lionel into being stone-cold sober, because he was that now.

“Does she harass everyone this way?” Angie asked.

“Sure does. Dolores has been here since before Hal had his stroke, and Clarissa treats her like she don’t know shit; and Junior, who’s been here on and off for over ten years, is treated like he knows even less!”

That got Angie thinking. “Interesting,” she murmured. “Well, good night. I’m going to bed.”

“What about the supplies?” he demanded.

“I’ll give you a list tomorrow.”

“What you going to cook for us, anyway? Is it any good?”

She stopped in her tracks and slowly turned. “Is it
good
?”

“Hell, when LaVerne cooks fancy, I wouldn’t give her food to the hogs.”

Angie’s eyes narrowed. “For you, I’m going to make something really special.”

“Is that so?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Sliced rhubarb and okra in a nest of alfalfa sprouts.”

“Goddamn,” he muttered to himself as he walked off. “She really does sound like a gourmet cook.”

It was late, too late for a priest who would be giving a mass at six
A.M
. to still be up and reading. Father Armand sighed and closed his book, an often-read collection of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. He stood, stretched, and went to the rectory’s bedroom.

In bed after his evening prayers, Father Armand found it hard to sleep. The priest had few illusions about the desperate troubles people could get themselves into, but the web of ugly secrets, vengeful passions, and violence that gripped his small community disturbed him greatly. He felt useless—a failure. He should know his people better. He’d been here four years—an eternity in some parts of this country, but in Jackpot, he was still considered an outsider. The former priest, Father Benedict, had been there sixty years. It was with thoughts of Ned Paulson’s murder and the attack on Maritza Flores that Father Armand finally drifted into a restless slumber, wondering if a better or more experienced priest might have been
able to unravel the mysteries that lay hidden behind this trouble.

The grinding of truck tires digging into gravel woke him. His eyes opened in the darkness and he lay unsure that he hadn’t only dreamt the noise. He rolled over, hoping to go back to sleep, but uneasiness filled him. He got out of bed in the moonlit bedroom and put on his robe, slippers, and glasses. Perhaps some troubled soul had come to the church in need of comfort and counsel.

The priest walked to the front room that served as his office and opened the door. The parking lot was empty.

Okay, he told himself, his imagination had become overactive. With all that was happening in his parish, that was no surprise. He turned to go back to bed when the squeal of old door hinges being opened shocked him. He stood on the porch unable to believe that anyone would be breaking into a church a second time in the same number of weeks. What was going on?

He headed toward the mission, baffled and angry.

It could be illegals crossing the desert and looking for food and water. They should have just come to his house; he’d give them aid.

But they wouldn’t have had a car …

It might be someone here to steal the sacred vessels, especially the silver chalices! That made him pause, but outrage overruled prudence.

All was quiet when he reached the sacristy. The door lay open. The priest stopped and looked all around. He heard no sound, saw no one. Fear for
the sacred vessels filled him and he crept inside.

The room was empty, the storage area undisturbed, and the chalices safe. Whoever was here must have heard him and run.

Breathing easier now, he looked around and noticed that the door to the room where the parish records were archived was no longer latched shut. Soundlessly, he headed for it, staying clear of the doorway. The windowless room should have been deep in darkness, but a small penlight flickered.

Curious, he entered, peering hard into the dimness. Only after his eyes adjusted did he reach over and flip the switch to turn on the overhead lights.

The shrill, insistent ringing broke the night’s deep quiet. Paavo, shaking the sleep from his head, glanced at the nightstand clock. He was accustomed to being awakened by the police dispatcher back home.

1:12
A.M
.

He groped for his blaring cell phone. Next to him, Angie stirred.

“Smith,” he mumbled into the mouthpiece.

Angie sat up in bed, flicked on the lamp, and turned toward Paavo, blinking owlishly at the light.

“Yes. Do you need anything? … Okay, I’m on my way.”

Paavo clicked off his cell phone and got out of bed.

“What’s happening?” Angie asked groggily.

“That was Father Armand. Teresa’s at the
church. He caught her going through the archive records. He doesn’t want to disturb her mother. Doc’s still at the clinic and gave the priest my number. He wants me to talk to her.”

“She broke in?” Angie was fully awake now. “That doesn’t make sense! Did he say why?”

“I’ll know soon enough,” Paavo said as he began to dress.

“I’ll get dressed, too,” Angie announced.

“No, you’re staying here.”

“But …”

“I’m going alone.” His voice was stern and inflexible. “You stay here with the door locked.”

One glance at Paavo’s hard, no-nonsense expression made it clear that any arguing was futile. “I’ll stay, but you call me as soon as you find out anything.”

“Angie, I’m sorry about the way this trip has turned out,” he said grimly.

Her heart seemed to stop as she watched him pull his Beretta and shoulder holster from the dresser drawer. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “But I’m planning our next vacation.”

Angie’s phone remained silent as she finished a cup of coffee. Of course, Paavo never phoned when he was on a case in San Francisco, so why should it be any different here?

The night was chilly and the coffee warmed her, but she feared the onset of caffeine nerves if she kept this up. Her mind raced, and her imagination conjured increasingly improbable scenarios for Paavo as the waiting wore her down. Her mother
had always told her that she was by far the most impatient of Serefina’s five children.

Angie got up from the sofa and meandered through the rooms of the bungalow. Each time she passed the coffee table in the living room she would glare at her cell phone, willing it to ring. At the living room window she stopped and stared across the plaza toward the dark hacienda.

Something flashed. Was it her imagination or something else?
Calm down,
she told herself.

She saw it again. Was it a flashlight? Somebody was on the second floor of Hal Edwards’s home. Every muscle stretched tight as she watched the upper rooms’ windows. Her eyes strained as if trying for X-ray vision. Despite her best efforts, though, she couldn’t achieve Superwoman powers.

If she could only get a wee bit closer … the instant the idea occurred to her, so did Paavo’s warnings about avoiding danger.

She quickly put on jeans, a shirt, and her boots, then ran back to the window. The light flashed once more. Her mind warred. She would phone Paavo—that was a condition of her staying after the snake incident. Frankly, though, he was too far away to help.

No excuses! She should phone him, and she would.

She picked up the cell phone and dialed. The message came back to her that the party she was calling was outside the cell area. At least she knew why he hadn’t phoned. She thought a moment. If she simply waited and watched from the bungalow for whomever it was to leave, it’d be too easy to miss
seeing the prowler in the darkness. She wanted to know who was sneaking around in there.

What choice did she have? It wasn’t as if she had to go
inside.
Just close enough to see who’d broken in. She’d be cautious and avoid danger, of course. That decided it. She switched her cell phone to go straight to messaging so that, if Paavo did phone, he wouldn’t wonder why she wasn’t answering.

She slipped out the front door. As much as she tried to tread soundlessly, the crunching of the gravel beneath her boots was like machine-gun fire. Hurrying across the open plaza, she felt safer once within the hacienda’s shadows. She could only hope no one had seen her on the moonlit square. Her breathing grew heavy.

Relax,
she ordered herself.

She worked her way to the side of the hacienda, and froze.

A dark shadow loomed before her, then slowly moved toward the moonlight.

After a moment she let out a breath of relief. It was just an ostrich.

She darted around the corner of the hacienda to the rear. Inching along, she stayed as close to the wall as possible, her every sense magnified. The feeble breeze in the night air seemed to rush, the tiny scampering of small animals and insects sounded like a stampede, and when the high cry of an owl shrilled, she jumped, convinced Gabriel had sounded the Last Trumpet. Her mouth and throat were dry; she was breathless and sweating in the cool night air.

Steps led to the veranda. The entry door was ajar, inviting and beckoning.

Maybe if she simply went up to the opening she could hear voices from inside. She ascended the steps. Beside the door lay a crowbar. Somebody means business, she thought.

She listened, but didn’t hear a sound. What harm would one quick-as-lightning peek do? Who would even know?

With Paavo’s admonitions thrumming in her ears, she touched the door. Like magic, it swung open to the kitchen, dusty and distorted by shadows cast by the moonlight streaming in through streaked windows.

The house was quiet. Had she imagined the light?

She moved past the kitchen and into the moonlit dining room. A single place mat lay atop the table. It was spooky—as if Hal had eaten there alone and would return any second. The presence of the angry, bitter, fearful, and lonely master of the hacienda loomed over the room, and she couldn’t help but contrast it with the vibrant, charitable, and clever man the historical society had written about. A surge of pity for Hal rose, followed by a deep, gnawing uneasiness. This is where a murdered man would haunt, she thought.

Outside the dining room was a hallway.

She paused.

Upstairs, soft noises could be heard. As her nose twitched from the dusty, stale air, she crept through the shadows until she reached the base of a staircase.

Clutching the banister with painful caution, she started up. Midway, a crashing sound reverberated through the house, and she came to a startled halt.

“Goddamn it!” grumbled a male voice.

“Don’t curse, Joseph.”

It was Clarissa.

“I bumped my leg on this damn dresser.”

“Stop whining!”

“This is a fool’s errand,” Joey cried, louder.

“Then you’re acting well-suited for it! Get busy. I want to get out of this room. Look at this jewelry, these clothes. The place reeks of Hal’s cheap women.”

Angie eased her way down a couple of steps, but stopped, curious, when they began to speak again.

“Mother, for cryin’ out loud,” Joey said, his voice climbing with each word, “it’s clear Dad didn’t hide it here. We’ve searched this place high and low. I’m not tearing up any more floorboards! It’s not here!”

Angie listened hard, not wanting to miss a word.

“If we can’t find it, we might just have to burn the house down.” Clarissa’s voice was cold and deadly serious.

“That’s crazy!”

“Don’t you dare talk to me that way!” Clarissa snapped. “You seem to forget that you wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for me!”

All talking stopped.
Go on,
Angie urged silently.

“Are you just going to stand there and rub your leg all night?” Clarissa demanded.

“It hurts, Mother. When will you get it through
your head that other people have feelings, even if you don’t?”

The sound of a slap rang through the dead air of the house. Angie listened, horrified, as a deep silence settled over the hacienda and a weighty sense of oppression pulsed in the gloom. Her breathing became so shallow she was growing light-headed. Her body ached from the strain of silent immobility, her nose continued to itch from the dust, but she wouldn’t miss this for the world.

Clarissa’s voice turned low and menacing. “You will stop acting like a vulgar weakling! You wonder why your father despised you? Why wouldn’t he? You acted scared of him even when he was a bedridden drooling wreck.”

“Stop, Mother,” Joey pleaded.

“Stop, Mother,” she repeated in a mocking tone. “You’d be nothing if it weren’t for me, and don’t you ever forget that!”

“I should never have come here.”

“Listen to me.” Clarissa spat the words. “If we can’t find the will, I’ll use his computer, his letterhead, and printer, and we’ll create one for him.”

“But, Mother,” Joey said, “if we can’t find it, no one else can either, and I’ll still inherit everything. Why are you bothering?”

“It’s insurance,” she said. “Who knows what your father did when he was away? Over the years, I learned to never trust him. Never!”

There were footsteps as the two moved about in their search. Angie waited. If the steps grew louder or seemed to head her way, she’d run. Besides being achy and miserable, the tingling pres
sure in her nose was mounting, demanding an explosive release. She rubbed it until the feeling passed.

“Damn! This odious computer still won’t work,” Clarissa cried. “Why is nothing simple?”

“How many times do I have to tell you, it’s password protected?” Joey snapped.

“And how many times do I have to tell you that you ought to know how to break into it! It’s your generation that deals with computers, not mine! I want to use it.”

Angie’s nose suddenly took on a life of its own. Twitching, wrinkling up, the need to sneeze built inexorably. She squeezed her nostrils, holding them shut, continuing to listen.

“All right, then.” Angie could all but hear Joey pout. “But it’s a waste of time.”

The sound of a chair scraping the floor reached her, along with the
oomph
of a weary man sitting down.

Soon after the tingling began, Angie’s nose went back to normal.

Joey and Clarissa seemed to be doing nothing but squabbling, and she needed to get out of there. She started slowly down the stairs.