Minor in possession

CHAPTER 15

The way Delcia Reyes-Gonzales wheeled out of the asphalt parking lot leaving strips of rubber in her wake told me that she was a woman with a definite purpose in mind, a lady with a fire lit under her slender butt. I must have said something that jibed with information she already knew or suspected, something important enough to merit her immediate attention. It pissed me off that she hadn't bothered to tell me what that something was.

Frustrated, I got in my rented Subaru and drove home to Ralph Ames' house, intent on finishing the laundry. At the very least, sorting and folding clean clothes was a job with some resolution to it, with a tangible beginning and end, both of which were firmly under my power and control. That was whole lot different from the people and circumstances surrounding Joey Rothman.

There were two messages on Ames' answering machine, both from Rhonda Attwood, both anxiously trying to reach Ralph, and both saying she'd call back later. Hearing her voice made me crabby as hell. It reinforced my suspicions that she was up to no good and made me wonder what kind of subterfuge she was going to use to sucker Ames into helping her. I was sorely tempted to erase the messages entirely, but I didn't. My mother taught me to be a better houseguest than that.

MYOB, Beaumont, I told myself firmly. MYOB.

I had completed the only crossword puzzle in the house and was just folding the last load of wash, the once-muddy sandbagging clothes, when the doorbell rang. I saw the green Fiat through the sidelight windows. What the hell is Rhonda Attwood doing here? I thought as I opened the door.

She smiled up at me. "Is Ralph back from the golf tournament yet?"

"No," I answered with some vexation. Again I was odd-man-out. Ralph hadn't told me about being in a golf tournament, but he had told Rhonda.

"He said he thought he'd be done by three-thirty or four," Rhonda continued easily. "Mind if I come in and wait?"

"No," I said. "Come on in."

Someone else might have noticed my annoyance, but Rhonda didn't. She followed me into the spacious living room, where I motioned her toward the long white leather couch. Once again, Rhonda didn't take the hint. Instead of sitting down, she prowled around the room, examining the various pieces of artwork on the walls and tables, frowning at some and nodding in appreciation at others.

Finally she turned and looked at me. "Ralph certainly has the eye of a connoisseur, doesn't he," she said.

"I wouldn't know about that," I answered brusquely. I thought she had a hell of a lot of nerve to meander uninvited around Ralph's living room, treating it like a goddamned museum.

"Would you like a drink?" I asked, attempting halfheartedly to assume the role of stand-in host.

She glanced at her watch before she answered. "A Crown Royal if you've got it, Neat."

I made my way to Ralph's well-stocked wet bar. The Crown Royal was there. So was a bottle of MacNaughton's. I poured the Crown Royal and left the MacNaughton's alone. There was a tiny refrigerator-cum-ice-machine under the bar. I threw some ice cubes in a glass and poured a can of Sprite into it for me.

When I gave her the Crown Royal, she looked me straight in the eye.

"Most men find me attractive," she said, "but I get the feeling you don't like me much."

She had me dead to rights. "You worry me," I said.

"Why?"

"Women who do vendettas scare hell out of me, that's all. You know, the female of the species is deadlier than the male and all that jazz. You asked me to help you track down the people responsible for your son's death, remember? And now you're trying to get Ralph Ames to do the same thing."

"So that's it," she said, taking a sip of her drink.

"Of course that's it," I replied impatiently. "Ralph Ames happens to be a super-nice guy, and he's a good friend of mine. I don't want to see him bamboozled into your wild-haired scheme. He's a lawyer, goddamnit, and a good one. If he messes around in an ongoing homicide investigation, you could end up getting him disbarred."

Rhonda Attwood regarded me levelly over the rim of her glass. "It's not what you think," she said. "When I asked you to help me, I didn't know about the baby."

"Baby?" I asked.

"Joey's baby, my grandchild. You're right, when I first talked to you, I didn't care what happened. The only thing I could think of was evening the score. I'd lost him years ago, but I'd always had a secret hope of getting him back. I can't do that now, but I have something else, a grandchild, something of my son that will go on from here. That's why I want to see Ralph, to ask him to help me set up a trust fund for the baby, and the mother too, of course."

"When you change your mind, you do a complete one-eighty, don't you?"

Rhonda smiled and nodded. "So I've been told."

I sat there for a moment and let her words sink in. She was talking as confidently about that baby as though her grandchild were already a living, breathing entity. All I could think about was Michelle Owens' hollow-eyed misery and Guy Owens' despairing pronouncement: "Fifteen and pregnant."

I hated to burst her bubble, but somebody had to do it.

"You'll never see that baby, Rhonda. Michelle is only fifteen. She's still wearing braces. Her father will never let her carry that baby to term. Even if he did, he wouldn't let her keep it."

Instantly two angry splotches of color appeared on Rhonda's cheeks. "It's a baby, Mr. Beaumont, not a stray puppy. Of course she'll keep it. I'll help her. Michelle can come live with me if she wants to. If she has to. Thanks to Ralph, I've just sold five paintings to Vincent at five thousand dollars apiece. That's what I want to use to start the trust fund."

"You're not listening, Rhonda. Twenty-five thousand is only a drop in the bucket of what it would take. We're talking about an adolescent here, a druggie with no education, no prospects, and no husband. What kind of life would that be for her or the baby, either one?"

Rhonda's glass, spewing Crown Royal all the way, sailed past my ear and shattered against the wall behind my head. At the same time, she launched herself from the couch, springing toward me like an outraged, unleashed tiger. I scrambled out of the way, slopping my own drink in my lap, jumping up and catching her wrists just in time to keep her sharpened fingernails from raking my face.

She screamed unintelligible words at me and fought to get loose with surprising strength, but I kept her wrists firmly imprisoned. I don't know how long we struggled like that, but finally I felt the fight ebb out of her. She sagged against my chest, sobbing, as the dam she had built across her emotions broke free.

I let her cry, knowing she was weeping for two babies, not one, for her lost son and for the grandchild she was afraid of losing, for herself and for Michelle Owens as well. I patted her shoulder, murmuring what comforting words of consolation I could think of. They sounded empty and inept. Useless.

At last she gave a shuddering sigh and moved to disengage herself. When I let her go, she crouched near where the glass had smashed and began picking up the jagged pieces.

"Here," I said gruffly, "I'll do that."

She bit her lip. "I'm used to cleaning up my own messes," she said.

Together we cleaned up the splatters of Crown Royal that clung to the wall and the sticky Sprite that dappled the tile floor. Luckily, most of the mess had missed the mint-green oriental rug.

"I really would help her," Rhonda said as she scrubbed the wall. "If she kept the baby, I mean."

"It's not that simple," I returned.

I felt her turn and look at me, sensed the resurgence of anger. "What would you know about it?"

I bridled at the female arrogance that automatically assumes all men are unfeeling, insensitive clods. I wanted to lash out at her and put her in her place, but memories of my own mother's struggles raising an illegitimate son in Seattle in the forties and fifties tempered the fight in me as well.

"More than you know," I answered wearily. "Way more than you know."

For several minutes we worked on in silence. "But couldn't Ralph work out some kind of custody agreement? I could raise the baby myself. Michelle wouldn't have to be responsible."

"The chances for that are pretty slim."

She looked at me for a long time, but finally she nodded in defeat. "I guess you're right." Rhonda glanced at her watch. It was after five, close to five-thirty. "Damn," she said.

"What's wrong now?"

"No matter what I do with the money, I still have to get those paintings over to Vincent. He's already paid for them, and I promised to deliver them this afternoon. The problem is, they won't fit in my car. They're too big. I was hoping I could get Ralph to take me in his, since he's the one who put the whole deal together."

"Where are they?"

"At the Renthrow Gallery, on Main Street in Scottsdale. They close at six."

"I could take you," I offered, "if you think they'll fit in the Subaru."

"Would you mind?"

"Not at all. I'll just leave a note for Ralph so he'll know where to find us."

She looked down at the amber stain on her blouse left by spilled Crown Royal. "I should stop by the hotel and change. It'll only take a minute."

"Sure," I said. "Lead the way."

In the gathering twilight I followed the Fiat out of Ames' driveway and back to MacDonald Drive, where we turned right and made our way to Lincoln Drive to the Red Lion's La Posada. We turned in by the main entrance and went past the huge pool with its immense waterfall. Rhonda led me through a maze of crowded parking lots to the hotel's farthest wing. She parked the Fiat in the only available spot then came up to me in the Subaru.

"Wait here," she said. "It'll only take me a minute to change."

When it comes to changing clothes, women's minutes and men's minutes are often quite different. She was back in less than one, still wearing the same clothes. "Let's go," she said, climbing into the car and slamming the door behind her.

"I thought you were going to change."

"Never mind that. Can't we go now, please?"

Something was seriously wrong, but she wasn't ready to tell me what it was, so I swung the Subaru in a tight circle and wheeled back toward the nearest exit on Lincoln.

"What happened in there?" I asked. "What's the matter?"

"Somebody's been in my room," she said.

"Who? The maid? Room service?"

"No, I mean somebody broke into my room. They've torn the place apart."

I stepped on the brake. "Are they still in there?"

Rhonda shook her head. "No. I don't think so."

"You don't think so? Jesus Christ, woman, you mean you don't know for sure?"

"As soon as I saw it, I didn't even go inside. I came straight back to the car."

I turned the wheel savagely and almost ran over a golf cart ferrying guests to their rooms.

"Where are you going?" Rhonda demanded.

"To the desk. We need to report this."

"No."

"No?" I echoed. "What the hell do you mean, ‘No'?"

"Just what I said. Reporting it could take hours. I want to deliver those pictures first."

God keep me from stubborn women!

Exasperated, I started to argue and then thought better of it. After all, if she didn't feel an urgency to report it right away, why the hell should I?

"Which way do we go?" I asked.

"Right on Lincoln," she said. "Then south on Invergordon."

Following directions, I turned back onto Lincoln eastbound. I was only a block or so away when I saw a set of headlights come up fast behind us. He had his high beams on, so I noticed him right away. At first I didn't think that much about it. I could tell it was one of those big four-wheel-drive jobs driven by somebody with the typical four-by-four attitude-the-world-is-my-ashtray mentality. I expected him to race around us, and he almost did. But then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he dropped back behind us and stayed there.

That worried me. When yahoos like that don't pass, they've got to have a reason. I glanced in the rearview mirror, trying to get a better look at the vehicle, but the bright lights blinded me.

It was early evening on an October Saturday, and traffic was fairly light. I tried speeding up, so did he, maintaining the same distance between the two vehicles.

"What's wrong?" Rhonda asked anxiously.

"Don't look back, but I think we've got a tail. Where do we turn?"

"The next light."

It was just turning green as we approached. There was no chance of catching a red. Abruptly, I stepped on the brakes and almost stopped, forcing the vehicle behind us to come far closer than the driver of the pickup had intended. I could see enough detail then to know it was a dark-colored, late-model Toyota 4-X-4 with huge, outsized tires. In the glow of the headlights from the car behind him, I could see the silhouettes of four round driving lights, "asshole lights" we call them, studding the top of the cab.

Behind us a horn blared.

"What are you going to do?" Rhonda asked.

Without a weapon of any kind, there was no point in forcing a confrontation. "Lose him," I said.

It sounded good, but it didn't mean a goddamned thing. Back home in Seattle, where I know all the streets and their intersecting nooks and crannies, it would have been easy to do, but there in Arizona, in unfamiliar territory driving a car with no guts, it was a bad joke. My only hope was to drive erratically enough to attract the attention of some passing traffic cop. With luck I might manage to offend some poor bloke into reporting me on his cellular phone.

Jamming the accelerator to the floorboard, I fishtailed onto Invergordon with the 4-X-4 right behind me. Far ahead of us the orange light at the next intersection turned red.

"What's that street up there?"

"At the light? Chaparral," she answered. "The one after that is Camelback."

I recognized Camelback as one of the heavily traveled arterials.

"Make sure your shoulder strap's on tight," I warned grimly, snapping my own across my chest. "This could get rough."

Mentally I timed the light as I wound the Subaru up as tight as it would go. I sailed through the first one on green and made a mad dash for the second. I could see the passing headlights of cross traffic as vehicles moved sedately across Invergordon on Camelback. A pair of headlights approached the intersection from the other direction. Desperately I hoped that the light on Invergordon was a demand light set on a short cycle in our direction.

We were three blocks away and still accelerating when the light facing us turned green. It switched back to orange as soon as the oncoming car moved into the intersection.

I'm still not sure if Rhonda knew what I was planning, but she didn't say a word. The light was red as we started through the intersection. Naturally, there was one hotshot who jumped the light. He clipped our back fender and spun into the path of the 4-X-4, which dodged crazily from side to side. There was a chorus of honking horns in our wake, but I was too busy fighting to get the Subaru back under control to see exactly what happened in the intersection behind us.

For a moment or so, it looked like we had gotten clear. In the rearview mirror the pickup seemed to be trapped in a maelstrom of stalled vehicles, while before us Invergordon lay straight and flat and empty.

But before I could breathe a sigh of relief, I saw the DEAD END sign beside the street and knew we were still in trouble.

"Dead end!" I yelped. "What the hell do they mean, dead end?"

"The canal," Rhonda replied through clenched teeth. "The Arizona Canal. It's right up here."

"Shit! So how do we get out of here? Right or left?"

"I don't know."

I wanted to get off Invergordon and duck into a side street before the pickup got loose from Camelback. I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance of making the right choice. I swung left onto a small side street. For a moment I thought it was going to be all right, but then we ran into a T.

People on the run instinctively turn right, so I swung left again, hoping to outfox our pursuer. We came out on a street called Calle Redondo that seemed to run on a diagonal. Behind it was a tall chain link fence.

"What's beyond the fence?" I asked, "The canal?"

"Yes."

"Is there water in it?"

Rhonda craned her neck. "I can't tell. Probably."

"How deep?"

"Seven or eight feet."

"Great."

Beyond the canal was another street, one that appeared to cross the canal, if only we could find a way to get over onto it. The problem was, the guy in the pickup had come to the same conclusion. He must have seen me turn left off Invergordon and realized there was only one way out of the maze. As we came around a blind corner onto Lafayette, I saw him lying in wait, parked inside the fence on the access road that ran next to the canal. He was hanging back, hoping to pounce as soon as we surfaced.

"What are you going to do?" Rhonda asked.

"Something that son of a bitch doesn't expect," I told her. "Brace yourself."

Shoving the accelerator all the way to the floor, I aimed for the 4-X-4's looming front left tire and nailed that sucker head-on, doing a good thirty-five miles an hour.

From what I remember of Doc Ramsey's high school physics class at Ballard High School, when a moving object hits a stationary one, the stationary one shares the momentum of the moving one. During the intervening twenty-eight years, everything else may have changed, but the laws of physics hadn't.

The Subaru stopped dead in its tracks with its nose bent straight into the ground while the pickup started moving. As the shoulder belt cut painfully into my collarbone, I caught only a brief glimpse of the shocked driver's open-mouthed amazement as his behemoth truck went ass-backwards into the canal. With the oversized tires half floating and half bouncing off the bottom, the truck, still right side up, floated out of sight under the bridge.

In this updated, four-wheel-drive version of David and Goliath, the Subaru may have won hands down, but the folks at Alamo sure as hell weren't going to like it.