Minor in possession

CHAPTER 22

"The diary," Delcia murmured immediately, as soon as I told her about my conversation with Denny Blake. "That has to be what else those guys were after."

"Right," I said. "That's what I figured, too, the moment he mentioned it. Only Michelle didn't have it. By then it was already sitting in Sedona waiting for Rhonda to show up and take possession."

"Whatever's in it must be hot stuff for them to run the kind of risks they did to get it back."

"There was the money," I suggested. "Don't forget that."

"I'm not," Delcia replied, "but the diary may have been their primary target and the money almost an afterthought."

Delcia was driving between Prescott and Phoenix. Radio transmissions were somewhat spotty. At times I had difficulty hearing her.

"You said you saw Joey writing in his notebook while you were roommates?" she asked.

"Yes. One that matched that description, anyway."

"So given what we know about the Crenshaws…"

She paused. For a moment I thought she had gone out of range, but instead, she was thinking. "Maybe I'd better take a run over to Wickenburg to check on the Crenshaws before I come on into Phoenix. What kind of car is she driving?"

"I don't know, not for sure. There's some confusion about that. She left here driving Ralph Ames' white Lincoln Town Car, but she may have gone over to La Posada and picked up the Fiat."

"I need to know for sure, Beau," Delcia said.

"Right. I'll find out and let you know. What about the F.B.I.? Did you find out anything from them?"

"You were right. They never got close to either Michelle or her father last night. They plan to interview both of them this morning."

Again the transmission faded. "I'm losing you, Delcia. You're breaking up."

Delcia came back in, her words intermittently fading in and out."…try to find…about car…let me know."

"I will," I answered, unsure whether she heard me or not. I turned around to Ralph. "Where's the phone book?"

He took one from the cupboard and handed it to me. "Who are you going to call?"

"A taxi," I told him. "We've got to find out for sure about the car."

I called for a cab and was promised one within the occupational standard delay time of twenty minutes. Not wanting to waste those precious minutes in empty waiting, I tried reaching Raymond W. Bliss Hospital on base at Fort Huachuca.

I expected to be told that Michelle was either in surgery or in the recovery room, but I gambled that Guy Owens would feel enough obligation to Rhonda and me for saving his ass that he'd tell me what he knew, if anything.

Calling the hospital was an endlessly complicated process because the base telephone exchange was in the process of transferring from one set of prefixes to another. It was another sad case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. The phone company information operators kept sending me on wild-goose chases to numbers that were no longer valid or to phones that rang forever without anyone hearing or answering.

I'm a stubborn man, though, and I kept dialing away, one number after the other, all the while cursing the dimwits who broke up the Bell system. Those screwballs obviously never heard that old tried-and-true maxim: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

At last I was connected to the base hospital. I asked to speak to either Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens or his daughter Michelle. "They're both patients there," I said.

"I'm sorry," the operator returned smoothly. "We have no one listed by that name."

She was lying, stonewalling me, that was certain. On a fainthearted whim, I tried another tack and asked to speak to Colonel Miller, commander of the hospital, but occasionally even the most unlikely wagers pay off. The hospital operator didn't hesitate.

"I'll put you through," she purred, and did.

"Colonel Miller here," a gruff voice said into the phone a moment later.

"My name is Beaumont," I said. "J. P. Beaumont. I'm looking for a patient of yours, a Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens."

"He's gone," Miller replied shortly. "Dismissed."

"Dismissed," I echoed. "What about his daughter? What about Michelle?"

"Mr. Beaumont," Colonel Miller said, "Guy mentioned you to me. In fact, he spoke very highly of your efforts on his behalf as well as his daughter's, but when he left here, he gave me very clear instructions that I wasn't to give any information to anyone other than to say they had both left the hospital. No exceptions. He seemed to think he and his daughter might still be in some danger."

"That's a distinct possibility," I agreed.

"When I talked to them, that's what the F.B.I. said as well, but I told them the same thing. Guy and Michelle are gone, and I don't know where. I can't tell what I don't know."

I could almost hear Colonel Miller smiling into the phone. He had gotten a charge out of telling the F.B.I. to go piss up a rope. Rank notwithstanding, stonewalling notwithstanding, he sounded like my kind of guy.

"I don't suppose that sat too well with the F.B.I., did it?" I observed dryly.

"Not particularly," he answered with a brief laugh. "As a matter of fact, I don't think they liked it at all. One thing I would like to say, though, Mr. Beaumont…"

"Yes? What's that?" I asked hopefully, thinking maybe he'd relent after all and tell me something useful.

"I personally would like to thank you for what you did for Guy and Michelle yesterday. Guy Owens and I have been friends, good friends, ever since 'Nam. As far as I'm concerned, I owe you one."

The cab arrived outside and honked twice.

"You're welcome," I said. "I've got to go. If you hear from Guy, tell him to get in touch with me right away. I need to talk to him. It's urgent."

"I certainly will," Colonel Miller replied. "You can count on it."

Instinctively, I knew I could. Miller hadn't given me any more information than he had given the F.B.I., but now at least I had some confidence that it was because he really didn't know anything more. And having somebody like him owe you one isn't all bad. You never can tell when that kind of obligation might come in handy.

Ralph had gone to the door to tell the cab driver I was coming. "Hurry," he urged. "The guy says the meter's running."

"Give me an extra set of keys for the Lincoln," I said.

"Why?" he asked. "If you're taking a cab, why do you need keys?"

"Because if the Lincoln's there in the lot at La Posada, I'll come back in that. If it's not, I'll hot-wire the Fiat. Or would you rather I hot-wired the Lincoln?"

"I'll get the other keys," Ames said.

He fished around in the drawer for an extra set, and I was out the door in a flash. At La Posada, the Lincoln was nowhere in sight. The Fiat remained parked exactly where we'd left it. I paid off the cabbie, hot-wire the Spider, folded myself inside, and drove home.

Back at Ralph's house, I got myself patched back through to Delcia, who had turned off Black Canyon Highway and was headed for Wickenburg.

"She's in the Lincoln," I said. "As far as we know."

"That still doesn't sound very definite," Delcia returned.

"All I can tell you is the make of the car she left here driving this morning. That's the best I can do."

"It'll have to do. I'll alert people to be on the lookout for it. Give me the DMV number."

With Ames' help I gave Delcia the license number as well as a complete description of the missing Lincoln, then I went on to tell her that Michelle and Guy had left the hospital at Fort Huachuca bound for an undisclosed destination.

"Is there a chance they went home?" Delcia asked. "We need to talk to her, to find out if she can help us shed any light on this diary thing. Have you tried calling their house?"

"I thought of it, but there's no point," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because the assholes who snatched Michelle also cut the phone lines. I doubt anyone has gotten around to fixing them. It's the weekend, you know."

"You're probably right," she said. "So what are you going to do?"

In the background, Ralph was hustling around the kitchen, juicing oranges, frying eggs, toasting bread.

"It looks like I'm going to eat breakfast before I do anything else," I said. "And then, if Rhonda doesn't show up here by two or so, we'll go over to the church and hang around. The funeral's scheduled for three. I can't imagine her missing that. What are you going to do?"

"I'll see the Crenshaws first, at least try to, and then…"

"Not without a backup, I hope."

"No," Delcia reassured me. "Not without backup. I've radioed for Mike Hanson to meet me there. You remember, the deputy from Yarnell."

"I hope he moves faster than he did the day I called him," I said glumly, still packing a grudge about my shabby treatment the day I had called for help.

"Don't worry. Mike'll be there in plenty of time. Whatever happens, I still plan on being at the funeral."

"Me, too," I said miserably, suddenly feeling left out of the action. "Whatever happens."

While Ames and I had breakfast, I finally had the opportunity to tell him what we had learned about Calvin and Louise Crenshaw's extracurricular sexual activities. Ralph was thunderstruck.

"I had no idea. They have such a good reputation in the recovery community, and they get such good press."

"We have an idea why, now, don't we? They have strings, secure puppet strings, on any number of people who go through that program, and my guess is they're not about pulling them."

"Choke chains is more like it," Ralph declared forcefully, "and I intend to see that something is done about it. Is everyone in on it? All the counselors, for instance?"

I thought about what Scott had told me about Burton Joe, and I thought about Dolores and Shorty Rojas. "No," I replied, "I think in this case the rot is localized pretty much with the Crenshaws themselves."

Ralph nodded and ate in thoughtful silence. God knows I should have been hungry, but the food landed in my stomach and formed into an indigestible lump. I toyed with it, pushing congealing egg yolk around on my plate with a piece of cold toast.

"You're not eating," Ralph observed. "I don't ever remember seeing you when you couldn't stow away a fullback's breakfast. Something's wrong. What is it?"

"I'm missing something in all this mess, something important," I said. "It's as though I'm trying to see what's happened through a thick, smoky haze. The pieces are all there, but I can't quite make them out. It's driving me crazy."

"Well," Ames said, getting up and beginning to clear away the dishes, "sitting here stewing isn't going to help. It's almost one now. How about if we get dressed and go on over to the church to wait. Rhonda's bound to show up there eventually. Surely she won't miss her own son's funeral."

And that's what we did. I didn't have many appropriate choices of dress available-one lightweight navy sport jacket, a pair of haphazardly dryer-creased trousers, a clean white shirt, and a clean pair of socks that matched. Ames appeared in a disgustingly proper gray three-piece suit with a maroon tie and matching silk scarf, precisely folded, in his lapel pocket. "Ready?" he asked.

And so, with Ralph Ames riding shotgun in his sober suit, and with my knees touching the bottom of the steering wheel, we drove in Rhonda Attwood's hot-wired Fiat to Joey Rothman's funeral at elegant St. John's Episcopal Church on Lincoln Drive. It all seemed suitably inappropriate.

The church, a thick reddish adobe affair set into a rocky hillside, was surrounded by mature natural vegetation-trees I recognized now as full-grown ironwood and palo verde. It looked as though the church had sprouted there, sprung up out of the ground like a man-made miniature of Camelback Mountain itself. St. John's Episcopal was backed by a high-walled patio. Ralph explained to me that the patio was lined with high-priced niches where, for a sizeable donation to the church coffers, family members could have their loved ones' ashes sealed away forever.

"A mini-condo cemetery," I said.

Ames nodded. "A high-priced mini-cemetery," he agreed, "and no about very lucrative to the ongoing building fund."

We were the first guests to arrive, turning up in the midst of a flurry of delivery vehicles. Van after van pulled up and dropped off flower arrangements. Near the fellowship hall, a caterer's crew was busily unloading tables, chairs, and massive amounts of food.

JoJo and Marsha Rothman maintained a certain position in the community, and that position was not to be taken lightly. Honor was to be paid, proper decorum observed, even over the death of an admittedly ne're-do-well son. Joey Rothman's funeral was going to be done right whatever the cost.

An anxious white-haired and white-collared minister arrived about one-fifteen. He gazed at the massed flower delivery vans with a frown of disapproval. I caught up with him as he turned back toward the church preparing to go inside.

"Excuse me," I said. "You wouldn't happen to be officiating at the Rothman funeral this afternoon, would you?"

He rounded on me. "What do you want?"

I backed away, put off by his surly attitude. "My name is Beaumont, J.P. Beaumont. I'm a friend of Rhonda Attwood's. You haven't happened to hear from her, have you?"

"The last I heard, Mrs. Attwood was staying at La Posada, but all the arrangements have been made through Mr. and Mrs. Rothman. The present Mrs. Rothman," he added meaningfully.

He turned and started away from me before I quite realized what had been said. "You said Mrs. Attwood was staying at La Posada? How did you know that?"

His voice hardened. So did his eyes. "My good man, the Rothmans are good parishioners of mine. If you have any questions, I suggest you address those questions to them."

With that he turned on his heel and stalked away. The message was clear. JoJo and Marsha Rothman's churchly contributions were paying his wages and keeping the building fund afloat. Rhonda Attwood's weren't. So much for Christian charity. And beyond that, if the minister had known where Rhonda Attwood was staying, any number of other people could have found out that information as well.

It was another bit of the puzzle to chew on.

By two o'clock the vans were gone. The altar area inside the dimly lit church was banked with flowers. Only in the kitchen and adjoining fellowship hall did the feverish activity of preparation still continue. A party, I thought, a party after the funeral. I've never understood those, and probably never will.

I was looking at my watch and still worrying over Rhonda's whereabouts when Delcia Reyes-Gonzales came striding across the gravel parking lot. I hadn't seen her pull in and park. She waved at the occupants of Buick Regal that was just parking in a handicapped area near the main door of the church.

Delcia hurried over to the driver's side, opened the back door, and brought out a pair of crutches, which she handed to the driver as he opened his own door.

Puzzled, I watched, wondering who it could be. Delcia was talking animatedly, so it was obviously someone she knew. Then she went around to the rider's side of the car and opened the rider's door to help someone out. I could see it was a female, but that was about all. Meanwhile, the driver got out of the car, head bent as he slowly maneuvered on the crutches.

Only when the three of them started moving toward the church did I finally realize who the new arrivals were-Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens and his daughter Michelle.

"I'll be damned," I said aloud to Ralph Ames. "I will be damned!"