Minor in possession

CHAPTER 16

Whoever said you can never find a cop when you need one was dead wrong. By the time I had helped a dazed but unhurt Rhonda Attwood out of the crippled Subaru, we found a whole wad of cops, or rather they found us, summoned to the scene by an irate jogger who insisted he had seen the whole thing and it was all my fault. The incident left me with a whole lot of explaining to do, although not nearly as much as I would have expected.

Once we gave him a description of the 4-X-4, the patrol officer in charge seemed to pay a lot closer attention to what I was saying. Within moments of hearing that Rhonda Attwood was Joey Rothman's mother, he was on the horn to his dispatcher, calling for a helicopter backup to search the canal for our assailant. His use of the word "assailant" struck me as important, especially in view of the fact that the jogger was still jumping up and down and telling anybody who would listen that I had attacked the pickup with my Subaru.

Subdued but uninjured, Rhonda seemed content to sit on the berm between the road and the canal with a blanket thrown around her shoulders while I worked my way through the tangle of paperwork. The last representative of officialdom was the tow-truck driver, a burly barrel-chested man in his late fifties who looked at the battered wreck of the Subaru and shook his head.

"I've picked up Alamo casualties for years," he said with a scowl. "But I've never heard that whole office so riled up as they are over this."

"They're pretty upset?" I asked innocuously. He nodded. "And you don't think it would be such a good idea for me to ride along out there with you tonight to get things straightened out?"

The tow-truck driver grinned. "It's up to you, buddy. Just how brave are you?"

"Not very," I said. "Maybe I'll send my attorney out to handle it in the morning."

"That's the ticket," he said.

I watched him load the crumpled remains onto a slanted rack on the back of his tow truck. The Subaru was neither driveable nor towable.

Boeing test pilots talk about flying the biggest piece home. They claim that you're all right as long as you keep the shiny side up and the greasy side down. The game little Subaru was still shiny side up, but her flying days were over.

"Detective Beaumont?" I turned to see who was calling. It was the Scottsdale patrol officer who had been first on the scene, although I didn't remember telling him or anyone else there my title as well as my name.

He motioned me over to his car. "We're about finished up here. Are you done with the car?"

I nodded. "He'll be gone in a few minutes."

"The Town of Paradise Valley has two detectives waiting for Mrs. Attwood at La Posada. We're sending one of ours as well. We'd like her to accompany the detectives when they go through her room. Another detective, one from Prescott, is on her way to pick you up."

"Delcia? How did she find out about it?"

"I wouldn't know about that, sir," the patrolman said, "but she should be here in a few minutes."

I went back over to where Rhonda was sitting. "Are you all right?" I asked.

"My collarbone hurts, where the shoulder strap cut into me, but I don't think anything's broken."

"Me too," I agreed, rubbing my finger along the painful bruise that cut diagonally across my own chest. "It could have been worse. That's why I aimed for the tire. The rubber took some of the shock."

"Have they found him yet?"

"No," I answered, "but I'm sure they will. A pickup stuck in the canal should be easy enough to spot."

Another car approached the scene, red lights flashing. "Come on," I said, gently helping Rhonda to her feet. "That's probably our ride."

It was. Delcia Reyes-Gonzales came around the car to meet us. "Are you two all right?" she asked anxiously.

"So far," I told her. The tow truck was just pulling away, and she allowed her eyes to follow it. "I'm going to need some more help with Alamo," I said.

She nodded. "I can see that. Ready?"

Delcia held open the back door of her Reliant, and I handed Rhonda into the back seat. There wasn't enough leg room for me, so I went around and climbed in on the rider's side. Delcia's unquestioning acceptance of what had happened seemed odd to me. I expected her to ask who was in the 4-X-4 and why I had deliberately collided with him. Instead, she drove us back to La Posada in thoughtful silence.

We went by way of Camelback and Invergordon. An assortment of officers had cleared away the wrecked cars, but the intersection was still lit with flashing lights while someone armed with a massive broom finished sweeping broken glass out of the street.

"In the entire Phoenix metropolitan area, you couldn't have picked a worse place than this," Delcia said, as she eased her way through the still-stalled traffic.

"Why's that?"

"This is the borderline where Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, and Phoenix all meet. It's going to take weeks to sort out all the paperwork."

"Oh," I said.

Once back at the hotel, Delcia and I stayed with the car while two Paradise Valley police detectives took charge of Rhonda.

No matter where I went, no matter what I touched, some other jurisdiction got dragged into the fray. If I thought about it very long, it would give me a complex.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Fine. Better than fine, actually. Dumping that asshole in the drink did me a world of good. It beats sitting around doing nothing."

"Doing nothing sounds about right to me," she returned.

I glanced at my watch. It was only seven-thirty, a bare two hours after Rhonda and I had left Ames' house. "How did you get here so fast?" I asked. "It's a long drive down from Prescott."

"I never went home," she said. Closing her eyes, she leaned back and rested her head on the car seat.

"Why not?"

"Too busy," she replied.

"They were already looking for that truck, weren't they?" I ventured shrewdly.

Delcia straightened up and looked at me. "What makes you say that?"

"As soon as I described the truck, everything shifted into high gear. Despite all indications to the contrary, the officer immediately assumed we had been the ones under attack."

She shrugged, as though she was too tired to argue about it. "You're right," she said. "They were looking for a truck matching that description."

"Why?"

"Because I asked them to," she said quietly.

I could see that Delcia Reyes-Gonzales was bone weary, but her demeanor was far different from the way she'd been at lunch. Then she'd been alert and toying with me, sparring and taunting at the same time. Now the sparkle had been drained out of her as well as the subterfuge. She weighed her words carefully when she spoke, but she answered my questions without ducking them. For the first time, she was treating me like a fellow police officer, someone working the same side of the street. It made a new man of me.

"But how did you know they'd come here looking for Rhonda?"

"I didn't. I put out an alert on the pickup because of the kids in Wickenburg."

"Wait a minute. What kids?"

"Two junior high kids, a boy and a girl, out necking in the middle of the night without their parents knowing they were gone. They had slipped out of their respective houses and met down by the river the night Joey Rothman died. They saw a dark-colored 4-X-4 parked right beside your Grand AM."

"Jesus Christ! You mean you've got eyewitnesses?"

"One of them told the counselor at school the next morning. That's why I had to leave your interview, to go talk to those kids."

"Eyewitnesses," I repeated.

"Not exactly. They saw two people, a man and a woman. Three, counting Joey. The man did the dirty work, pulled the trigger, while the woman stayed in the truck. Afterward, the man drove the car away, and the woman drove the pickup. The kids saw the whole thing, but from a distance, and they were way too scared to report it that night."

"But can they identify them?"

"No." Delcia sighed. "No such luck."

We were quiet for a few moments.

I was amazed, not by what she was telling me so much as by the very fact that she was telling me. Those kinds of inside details aren't usually divulged to anyone outside the immediate scope of a homicide investigation, even people in the same department, yet here she was, unloading it on a complete outsider.

"Why are you telling me all this, Delcia? At lunch today, you wouldn't give me the time of day, and now, a few hours later, it's full-disclosure time. What's going on?"

"I've done some checking on you, Detective Beaumont," she said at last.

"Oh? What kind of checking?"

"I've talked with a number of people in Seattle-Captain Lawrence Powell, for one. Sergeant Watkins, and your partner, Allen Lindstrom."

"You have been busy," I observed. "What did they say?"

Irrepressible laughter bubbled up through her weariness. "They all said that you're a regular pain in the ass on occasion, but they all agreed unanimously that you're way too smart to shoot somebody with your own gun and then hide the weapon in your car."

"Some friends," I snorted.

Delcia grew serious again. "Convincing friends," she said. "Altogether, they made a pretty good case."

"So where do we stand?"

She didn't acknowledge my question. "Did Michelle Owens know where Rhonda was staying?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Michelle? I don't know. Why? I remember Rhonda saying that she had invited Michelle to the funeral. She may have mentioned then that she was staying at La Posada."

"Michelle Owens has turned up missing," Delcia answered grimly. "From her house, sometime during the night last night. I've been on the phone with her father off and on all afternoon."

"What does this mean? Did she take off on her own, or did somebody grab her?" I asked.

"My first guess, after I talked to him, was that she left of her own accord. Now, after this business here, I'm not so sure. Did anyone else know where Rhonda was staying?"

"I don't know. Ralph Ames, my attorney, and I both knew. And as far as that goes, Rhonda could have told any number of people."

Delcia nodded. "I guess you're right."

"You said you thought at first that Michelle left on her own. Why? What did her father say?"

"That the two of them had had a big fight last night. He'd evidently made an appointment for Michelle to go to an abortion clinic in Tucson early next week, but she didn't want to go. He said he went to bed without worrying about it because he was sure he could get her to change her mind. This morning, though, when he got up, Michelle wasn't in her room. She's disappeared without a trace."

"Any sign of foul play?" I asked.

"None, and nothing seems to be missing. The officers on the scene are betting she has simply run away."

"So did she?"

"I don't know," Delcia replied. "If someone came looking for Rhonda, they might have come looking for Michelle as well."

"Exactly."

"And I don't like the score. Joey's dead. One attempt on Rhonda and two on you, so whoever's behind this isn't playing games."

"You've got that one right," I told her. "That bastard in the pickup wasn't out for a friendly game of chicken. He'd have nailed us good if I hadn't gotten to him first."

"There's a third possibility," Delcia said.

"What's that?"

"What if Michelle was the woman those kids saw in the truck?"

I didn't like it, but the theory carried with it a certain ugly plausibility. Delcia didn't seem to like it much either.

"It's more likely that she just took off, that it all got to be too much for her. Think about it. The girl's pregnant, her boyfriend dies, her father wants her to have an abortion, the boy's mother wants her to keep the baby. That's a hell of a load for someone to carry around when they're only fifteen years old."

"It's a hell of a load at any age," I said, reminded once more of my own mother's struggles.

Again we fell silent. Although I appreciated the changed basis between us, I couldn't just let it go at that. I had to pick at the scab and know what lay under it.

"So how come I'm not a civilian anymore, Delcia? I don't mind, not at all, but I'd like to know why."

"Maybe I need the opinion of an outside observer," she replied. Her answer sounded coy, and I balked at the idea that she was putting me off again.

"Why?"

She sighed as though finally giving in to something she'd done her best to sidestep. "Today, after I talked to you at lunch, I did some checking into the prosecutor who arranged Joey Rothman's MIP. There seem to be some irregularities in the plea-bargain arrangement."

"Like what?"

"Like the charges should have been a whole lot stiffer than they were."

"You mean drugs?"

She nodded. "It wasn't a simple first offense, either. I'm still not sure how the prosecutor pulled it off. It could be nothing more than James Rothman's highly placed connections…" Her voice drifted away, leaving the sentence dangling.

"Or…" I prompted.

"You have to understand I've been curious about Ironwood Ranch for years. Not anything definite, not anything that ever made it as far as a conscious thought, but curious. There have been hints of trouble occasionally, but until the Rothman case, nothing ever got out of hand."

"That's because Louise Crenshaw always kept a lid on it," I put in.

"And Louise always had help," Delcia added.

"Who?"

"Sheriff Heagerty," she answered. "He's a former client of Ironwood Ranch, and so's the MIP prosecutor. Not only that, Calvin Crenshaw was a major contributor to Heagerty's reelection campaign during the last two elections."

"So what are you thinking?"

"That maybe they both got hung up in Louise Crenshaw's little sideshow."

"That would explain a lot, wouldn't it," I breathed, "but do you have any proof?"

"I'm working on it. In my spare time, but I'm on real thin ice, and I can't afford to go through regular channels on this. That's why I'm using you as a sounding board. I need someone I'm sure isn't tarred with Louise Crenshaw's brush. She never managed to get her claws into you."

I smiled at Delcia's comment. "I thought I was the only one who noticed Louise Crenshaw's talons. So what do you think? Are the Crenshaws involved in this business too? Are they part of Joey's supply system?"

"Maybe, and maybe not. I don't know what to think. I sure as hell can't afford to disregard them, but the problem is, I'm pretty much working alone at least as far as Yavapai County is concerned. My guess is that Sheriff Heagerty wants me spread too thin to do anything constructive. If I hadn't been so tired, if I had been thinking straight, I would have asked for protection for Rhonda and Michelle both. Even then, it might not have helped, but still…"

She turned and looked me full in the face. "As far as Rhonda's concerned, you saved the day. I want you to know I'm grateful."

"You're welcome," I said, "for that and for saving my own ass too, but it would have been a helluva lot easier if I'd been armed. When that creep came after us, I felt like we were sitting ducks."

"Do you ever go to swap meets?" Delcia asked suddenly.

The abrupt detour in the conversation sounded as though Delcia Reyes-Gonzales had reverted to her earlier game-playing.

"Swap meets?" I asked stupidly. "You mean, like in garage sales?"

She nodded, but I shook my head. "Not me. Buying somebody else's cast-off junk isn't my idea of a good deal."

"Maybe you should check into them," Delcia said seriously. "In fact, I believe there's one at Phoenix Greyhound Race Track on Saturdays and Sundays. I'd try it, if I were you. It's on Washington, east of the airport. Do you think you can find it?"

"I'm sure I can, but why would I want to?"

"The guy's name is Zeke. From what I've heard, he's there every weekend. He sells guns. Used, of course. From a private collection."

"Privately," I said, getting the picture. "So there's no three-day waiting period?"

"That's right."

"And you're suggesting I go get myself one."

"Who, me?" she asked innocently. "Certainly not. I never said anything of the kind."

Just then Ralph Ames walked up to the car and tapped on Delcia's window.

"Ralph Ames," he said, introducing himself to her. "Beau here is a client of mine. So's Mrs. Attwood. They told me inside that I'd find him out in the car with you. May I join you?"

He opened the door and climbed into the cramped back seat.

I completed the introductions. "This is Detective Delcia Reyes-Gonzales, Ralph. She's from Prescott. How did you get here?"

Ralph smiled at her. "We met on the phone." He turned to me. "When you two didn't show up at Vincent's I got worried and came here looking. From what I've heard, Alamo is going to want to burn you at the stake. The next time you try to rent a car from them, alarms will probably go off on Alamo computers all over the country."

"At least I didn't take it to Mexico," I said. "That's the only thing I remember them telling me that I couldn't do. What's going on in there? It's taking a long time."

"They're about finished," Ralph said. "I suggested that considering the circumstances it might be wise for Rhonda to come stay with us. For tonight anyway. I'm sure I'll be far more at ease if I know she isn't staying by herself. We'll leave the Fiat parked here in the lot and make sure we aren't followed when we go."

I looked at Delcia. She was half dozing right there in the car. "What about you?" I asked. "Surely you're not going to drive all the way back home tonight."

"No. My sister lives across town in Peoria. I'll stay there tonight. If Ralph here can give you and Rhonda a ride home, I'll go ahead and take off if you don't mind. It's been a long day."

Ralph and I waited in La Posada's well appointed lobby until the detectives finished with Rhonda's room. She arrived in the lobby carrying a suitcase and small overnight bag.

"I guess you're stuck with me for the night," she said apologetically. "They told me I shouldn't stay here alone. And what about the paintings?"

"Don't worry," Ames assured her. "I'll let Vincent know what happened."

We took her out to the car through the main entrance. Driving home, I made several quick maneuvers and doubled back once or twice, making sure we didn't have a tail. When we got to the house, Ralph insisted on parking the Lincoln in the garage.

Once inside the house, we settled down in the living room for a few minutes to recap what all had happened over the course of the evening. Ralph had heard bits and pieces from many sources. He was the one who gave Rhonda the bad news that Michelle was missing. She took that stoically enough, but when she heard that Guy Owens had been trying to coerce Michelle into having an abortion, she was outraged and wanted to get in the car right then and there to make the three-and-a-half-hour drive to tell Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens what was what. We finally dissuaded her, but only barely.

Toward midnight, we ventured into the kitchen, where Ralph made us a late-night supper of cheese, cocoa, and toast. Munching away, we finished our play-by-play review of the evening at the kitchen counter, said our good-nights, and headed for our separate rooms. I was in bed with lights out when there came a light tapping on my door.

"Who is it?"

"Rhonda. May I come in?"

She came into the room and felt her way across to the bed. Once there, she sat down on the edge of it.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Is something wrong?"

"What would have happened to me tonight if you hadn't been there at the hotel, waiting for me in the parking lot?"

"I don't know. That's hard to say."

"He must have been there, hiding in my room. Would he have killed me if he'd had the chance?"

"Maybe, and then again, maybe not. We still don't have any idea what he was after, but my guess is that they think you have something, maybe something damaging to the whole operation."

"But I haven't."

"That doesn't matter, as long as they think you do."

"So why am I scared now, hours after it's all over?"

"For one thing, it's not all over. If they still believe you have whatever they were looking for, you're still in danger. Stay alert, and don't fault yourself for being jittery after the worst of the action seems to be over. It happens that way sometimes. When you're in the thick of things, you're too busy to be afraid. Fear comes later."

She turned to face me. In the pale glow of moonlight shining through the window, her face was unnaturally white, eyes wide open. I reached out my hand and caught hold of her narrow wrist, feeling the pulse imprisoned within it.

"It's all right to be scared," I told her. "It's a normal reaction."

"Were you scared out there in the car when he was after us?"

"Shitless," I answered.

"What about now?"

"It's worse now," I said, suppressing a grin.

She snatched her hand away and leaned closer, peering at me closely in the hazy light. "Worse? Really? Or are you making fun of me?"

"I'm not making fun," I said. "Women scare me a whole lot more than 4-X-4s."

For a moment she looked hurt, then angry, then a tiny smile tickled the corners of her mouth. "You mean to tell me you're scared of me?"

"Absolutely. Out of my wits. Shouldn't I be?"

Within seconds, we were both laughing, giggling first then laughing uproariously, rolling on the bed, holding our stomachs, and gasping for air. When we finally quit laughing, we were still lying on the bed, facing each other. Neither one of us made a move to get up. Within moments I moved closer, folding her in my arms.

It was the most natural thing in the world.