Desert Lost (9781615952229) (9 page)

“No.” Freddy's eyes looked glassy. At least he was on
his
meds, not that they seemed to have helped him much.

“Does he have any friends he could be staying with?”

“No friends. Like me.”

“Relatives?”

“His mother died a long time ago. Don't think he had anybody else.”

“Did he ever mention a place he liked to hang out?”

This time Freddy surprised me. “The park.”

“Which park?”

“Arroyo Seco.”

That took in a lot of real estate, since Arroyo Seco, where Warren and I had once picnicked, ran all the way from the San Gabriel Mountains to downtown Los Angeles. While I was worrying about that, something rustled behind me. I turned, expecting to see a family of rats coming out to bask in the late afternoon stench. Instead, I saw a ginger-colored cat settling itself on a stack of newspapers. The cat was as obese as Freddy.

I returned to my questioning. “Do you know which part of the park he liked to hang out at?”

“Down by the skate park. He used to be a skater before the medication screwed him up. He could do all sorts of tricks—Ollie kickflips, grinders, darksides…” His eyes lost their glassy stare and truly focused on me for the first time. “I used to skate, too. Bet you didn't know that. I even came in third in the Freestyle at the Santa Barbara Championship one year.”

An image of a leaner, happier Freddy soaring through the air flashed through my mind. “That must have been wonderful,” I said, trying to keep the pity out of my voice.

Apparently I was unsuccessful, because his face closed in again. “That's all I know. You leave now.”

I did.

As it turned out, Nevitt wasn't at the skate park, or if he was, I didn't spot him. None of the skaters admitted to seeing him, either. Since it was now too dark to continue my hunt, I called Beverly Hills PD, told the investigating officer assigned to Angel's case what I'd learned, then drove back to Beverly Hills. There I found the Black Monk and Angel sitting together by the pool, watching lit candles float around on fake lily pads. It looked pretty.

“The skate park at Arroyo Seco?” The expression on Otto's face made me wonder if I'd done the right thing in letting him know what I'd discovered.

“That's what my informant said. Otto, Beverly Hills PD promised to check. But in the meantime, you're not going to do anything foolish, are you?”

Angel answered for him. “Don't worry. He doesn't want to hurt Nevitt, just keep him from hurting me or the twins. Isn't that right, Otto?”

Otto grumbled something that sounded like a yes, and went back to watching the candles.

The worry lines between Angel's eyebrows disappeared. “I'm sure Beverly Hills PD will follow up, and quickly, too. Since Rebecca Schaeffer, they've been very good at working with other jurisdictions in cases like this.” She gave me a movie star smile. “Oh, Lena, I can't tell you how grateful I am! You've done more in a half day than anyone else has been able to do in weeks. Listen, I know my troubles have taken you away from your own work, and that you're eager to go home, but it's pointless trying to fly back to Scottsdale tonight. I'll have Maria put fresh linens on the bed in the guest room. You like pasta, don't you? She makes a mean carbonara.”

It sounded like she thought the Dean Orval Nevitt problem was solved. Remembering that all those threatening letters had Beverly Hills post marks, I wasn't so sure.

***

Filled with misgivings, the next morning I returned my rental to Avis and boarded an eight o'clock Southwest flight. Over the mountains we flew into turbulence so severe that some passengers reached for their barf bags. Me, I merely clutched the armrests and prayed until the plane slid through the clouds and floated to a soft landing at Phoenix Sky Harbor.

I'd just picked up my bag from the luggage carousel when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“Lena Jones?”

I turned to face two uniformed sheriff's deputies. The glum looks on their faces signaled bad news. Had something happened to Jimmy? Warren? Rosella? Or had the walking insanity known as Dean Orval Nevitt caught up with Angel?

“Yes, I'm Lena Jones. What…?”

“Miss Jones, you're under arrest.”

Chapter Twelve

“You know this whole thing is ridiculous, Dagny.”

The look Lieutenant Ulrich gave me across the interview room table was unreadable. When the sheriff's deputies had turned me over to Scottsdale PD, she'd ordered my handcuffs removed, but that had been her last display of mercy. Now she'd reverted to her usual clam-cold persona.

“When my officers went out to confront Mr. Ezra Shupe about your claims, he denied them all. Then he made some pretty serious claims himself. Unlike yours, his were backed up by the statements of several witnesses.”

The closed room smelled of sweat and fear. Not mine, I hoped. “You saw the tape.”

“A tape which, as the complaint Mr. Shupe filed against you stated, was illegally obtained by trespass.”

Just like a polygamist; fighting the law with the law. “That's a crock. I stayed on my side of the fence.”

“After reviewing those tapes, our tech estimated that your camera lens could possibly have protruded into Mr. Shupe's property by about a quarter-inch, so yes, it appears that you might have trespassed. More seriously, you videotaped minors without their guardians' consent. Given your knowledge of police procedure, why'd you do that?”

“Two points. Number one, I don't believe what you're telling me about the lens protruding into the property, because as you say, given my knowledge of police procedure, I made certain it didn't. Point number two, you know damned well why I made that tape.”

No expression. “Shupe claims that you and your friend Rosella Borden were planning to kidnap at least one, possibly several, of those minors. Ms. Borden does have a history of doing that.”

“Never proven.”

“Where is Ms. Borden, by the way? We've had no luck getting in touch with her.”

“I'm certain you've already discovered that her house burned down recently, so she had to find new lodging. Exactly where, I don't know.” Which was the truth, given the size of the great state of California. “As for Ezra Shupe, he filed those charges to deflect attention away from the fact that one of his so-called ‘wives' was murdered. You and I both know that when a pregnant woman is beaten to death, who's usually guilty.”

“You're accusing Mr. Shupe of murder, then?”

Her intransigence was getting to me. “The woman was beaten to death, Dagny. And Ezra's known for his violence, whether he carries it out himself, or by proxy.” My arm still stung from the God Squad's shotgun blast.

“No charges have ever been filed against Mr. Shupe. Or his brother.”

Rosella had been right. Scottsdale cops had no idea of the way polygamy worked. The very idea that one of the compound's women would press abuse charges against her man—especially when the man was head of Prophet Hiram Shupe's God Squad—was laughable. Such a foolhardy woman would never live to appear in court. Is that what had happened to Celeste? I voiced my suspicions to Dagny, but she shook her head.

“When my detectives entered his residence, and he didn't resist by the way, we saw no evidence of spousal abuse.”

“Given those long dresses they wear, those women could be beaten black and blue and you wouldn't be able to tell.” I took a deep breath and fought back my rising temper. “Okay, so you don't see Ezra as a viable suspect in Celeste King's death. It doesn't change the fact that there's a polygamy compound operating right here in Scottsdale, that they're using underage children to work construction, and that the kids aren't attending school. Do something, Dagny.
Anything
!”

“Those problems are the concerns of Child Protective Services, not Scottsdale PD. For your information, we did convey our concerns to CPS and other possibly interested organizations.”

Which was the same as saying little would be done. When it came to crimes against women and children in the compounds, county, state, and federal folk had dismal records for looking the other way. These days they were all too busy rooting out undocumented workers and shipping them back to Mexico.

Disgusted, I said, “Dagny, are you going to book me on Ezra's trumped-up charges or not? If you are, I'm through talking. I want to call my attorney.”

A slight flicker in those cold eyes. “You're refusing to cooperate?”

“As long as you refuse to investigate broken child labor laws,
and
truancy,
and
blatant polygamy—which, the last time I looked, was against the law in Arizona—yes, I'm refusing to cooperate. Now how about that attorney?”

For a moment she just stared at me, her expression no more revealing than before. Then, to my surprise, she stood and walked to the door. Before opening it, she said, “You're free to leave.”

Whether my answers had satisfied her or not, Dagny knew Ezra's claims were groundless. But I was certain that with Ezra's secret fiefdom now out in the open, he would continue to use me as an excuse to redirect the cops' attention elsewhere. Given the political climate in Arizona, his efforts just might work.

I took out my cell phone, summoned a cab, and went home.

***

Without stopping at the office to tell Jimmy I was back, I walked upstairs to my apartment and showered off the stench of the interrogation room. I couldn't shower away, though, the unease I'd felt about leaving Beverly Hills before the actual arrest of Dean Orval Nevitt. I also wasn't certain that I trusted the Black Monk not to hurt him when he followed up my footwork and located him at Arroyo Seco Skate Park. I hoped that the Pasadena cops got there first.

Sorry as I felt for Nevitt, Angel's welfare worried me even more. Those last letters signaled a serious downturn in Nevitt's mental health, and while he'd never been violent before, there was always a first time. Something else about the letters bothered me, too, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't pinpoint it. Yes, the Beverly Hills postmarks were troubling, and so was the dead butterfly, but something…

Trying to force memory never works, so I set that problem aside to revisit later and turned my mind to a more immediate situation: Celeste's murder. Stepping out of the shower, I hurriedly dried, then dressed in clean jeans and tee shirt, and went downstairs to Desert Investigations, where I found Jimmy deep in conversation with a woman wearing ripped jeans and a gaudy tie-died tee shirt.

She sat with her back to me, but something about the set of her shoulders looked familiar. The woman's hair, a Brittany Spears-pink wig, curved gracefully at mid-neck length, stopping just above a neck tattoo shaped like a folded pink ribbon. I'd seen that design before; it identified breast cancer survivors and the people who loved them.

Jimmy smiled up at me. “Lena, guess who's here?”

My heart knew even before the woman turned around.

Madeline.

The foster mother I'd thought was dead.

Chapter Thirteen

I was seven years old.

Earlier that morning, a male social worker had picked me up from a foster home that, because of my continued acting-out, refused to keep me. Like most foster children, my clothes were stuffed in the black plastic garbage bag at my feet. As the social worker explained the situation to a tall, dark-haired woman who smelled like turpentine, I looked around at her house. Messy. Gaudy. The walls appeared to be white, but it was hard to tell because they were covered by so many paintings. The paintings themselves seemed little more than bright splashes, representing nothing other than odd combinations of color that clashed not only with each other but even with themselves.

“Red doesn't go with pink,” I said, interrupting the social worker's speech about the effects of brain damage on behavior.

Before he could tell me to be quiet and, for once, be good, the tall woman said, “Smart girl. That's exactly why I did it.”

Smart? No one had ever called me that before. Bad, yes. Destructive, yes. But never smart.

I was certainly smart enough to recognize that her colors were all wrong. Or at least, I thought they were. “You shouldn't put things together that don't belong.”

She waggled her eyebrows at me and grinned. “Awful, aren't I?”

This was something new, too, an adult calling herself awful and finding it funny. The social worker took her baffling statement as his cue to leave. “Contact me when…” A pause. “Ah,
if
there's trouble.” To me, he said, “Now, Lena, you mind Mrs. Grissom. Or…” He didn't finish. He didn't need to. Ever since I could remember, my life had been one foster home after another. I was a walking disaster and I knew it.

When the social worker closed the door behind him, the tall woman handed me the brush she'd been holding. Like her hand, it was smeared with yellow. When I took the brush, my hand turned yellow, too.

“Forget that ‘Mrs. Grissom' crap, kid,” she said. “Just call me Madeline. Follow me into the studio and let's see how much trouble we can get ourselves into.”

***

As Madeline hugged me, I noted that either I'd grown a couple of feet, or she'd shrunk. Probably the former.

“I thought you were dead,” I said, after I could finally speak. She was still crying, I was still trying not to. Jimmy, despite the old adage that Indians don't cry, also looked pretty damp-eyed as he hurried out the door to give us privacy.

“Almost happened, sweetie,” Madeline replied. “But here I am. And here
you
are, beautiful as ever.”

We blubbered at each other for a few minutes until, during yet another bone-crushing hug, I noticed her stomach growling. Once our mutual tears had dried—yes, my dam finally broke—I offered to take her to McDuffy's for a big steak, but she informed me that she didn't eat meat any more.

“You're a vegetarian? Since when?” I remembered the wonderful meatloaves she used to bake, the plump roast chickens, the Friday night steaks.

“Since my double mastectomy. Going through something like that makes you start thinking.”

The double mastectomy was the reason CPS had removed me from Madeline's home after less than a two-year stay. The agency had considered her too ill to care for me, and her husband, Brian, too distracted by work and worry. CPS had probably been right, but children don't understand things like that. As a result, I never truly bonded with a foster family again.

“Most Chinese restaurants offer vegetarian dishes,” she said. “I passed three Chinese buffets on the way over here.”

“Buffet? No, we need some place quieter so we can talk.” I remembered Fresh Mint, the vegan Scottsdale restaurant praised by one of my vegan clients. Within minutes we were both sitting in a quiet booth, surrounded by calm-seeming people eating dishes that actually looked appetizing. The female customers wore their hair long and unprocessed, and half the men had beards. Both sexes wore love beads, natural fiber clothing, and canvas—not leather—shoes. I felt about as at home here as I did at Warren's house.

Better call him
, a little voice whispered. I nudged it back.
Later
.

Other than her pink wig, Madeline fit right in. She had aged, but had done little to disguise the march of time. Although I saw lines here, sags there, the imperfections gave her face a depth cosmetic surgery could never approach. Even her out-of-fashion jeans and tattered tee shirt—the front proclaimed
The Grateful Dead Is Not Dead, They're Just Napping
—looked good on her. A brief glance at her hands revealed no nail polish, just a thin strip of what appeared to be Prussian blue under one of her short nails, some chrome yellow under another.

“Still painting, Madeline?”

“I'll stop painting when they pry my brush from my cold dead hands.” A sly smile, in recognition of what had almost happened to her.

“I thought you
were
dead,” I repeated.

Her smile vanished. “As soon as I went into remission, I started looking for you, but of course, CPS wouldn't give me any information. By then Brian and I had bought a house in upstate New York, where my sister lives. Sickness makes you realize how important family is.”

Perhaps in response to my stricken face, she reached out and took my hand again. “Shit. What a tactless thing to say. You'll always be my family, Lena.
Always
.”

Afraid I'd get emotional again, I didn't respond.

From the very beginning, Madeline had accepted me as I was, not as she wanted me to be. Like many brain-damaged children, I'd been subject to seizures, which had me in and out of the hospital. Even worse were the violent rages that could be triggered by just about anything: a change in the weather, a meal I didn't like, a word or glance I misinterpreted. During those rages, I would strike out at whatever or whomever was closest and as a result, the path of my childhood lay littered with broken dishes, slashed sofas, and bruised care-givers. Although earlier foster parents had begun their work with me with high hopes, they'd all eventually run out of emotional resources.

Until Madeline.

We sat in silence until I recovered myself, then Madeline—alert as ever to my changes in mood—said, “Well. Speaking of family, have you found your biological parents yet?”

I shook my head. “The trail's cold. Which reminds me. If CPS wouldn't help you, how did you find me?”

“Last week the local newspaper ran a wire story about a child abuse case in Atlanta. This poor little girl…” She paused for a moment, then continued. “About midway down the story, it mentioned a similar case in Arizona, and gave the name of the private detective who helped rescue a child about to undergo…Well, you know. Anyway, after a quick search of the Internet, I wound up on Desert Investigation's web site and saw your picture.”

Leaning over the table, she touched the scar on my forehead. “You never had it fixed?”

“It helps me remember.”

Helps me remember the night I was shot, helps me remember my mother's screams, helps me remember my father saying goodbye.

The waiter's sudden voice interrupted my slide down the time tunnel. “What'll you ladies have?”

Madeline ordered something called Rainbow Wonder, while I, an unregenerate carnivore, settled on the soy spare ribs in citrus ginger sauce, hoping they'd remind me of meat. As soon as the waiter left, I summoned the strength to broach the subject I hadn't felt strong enough for earlier.

“You mentioned something about remission. Are you…?”

She touched her wig. “Just a fashion statement. I've been cancer-free for years, but it was one hell of a struggle. No one ever tells you how tough chemotherapy can be. It's like they're inserting fire into your veins. Then comes the nausea, but since we're about to eat, I won't describe that. Cannabis helps fight it, not that the government cares, the puritan pricks.”

My Madeline, still feisty. I'd been so moved by seeing her again that I'd not thought to ask her about her husband. I'd been fond of Brian, but he'd worked such long hours I rarely saw him.

“Brian didn't come with you?” I asked. “I'd like to see him, too.”

Her face changed. “He's dead. Huntington's Disease.”

For a moment I stopped breathing. Brian, dead? It didn't seem possible. All that concern about Madeline's health, and then…Suddenly I had a vision of Brian hunched over his workshop in the garage, sander in hand. A cabinet-maker by trade, he was building a special-order hutch. The scent of male sweat and sawdust drifted down to me over the years, twisted my heart. I'd taken him for granted. But isn't that what we always do with people we love?

“When?” I finally managed to ask.

“Almost twenty years ago.” She paused, then continued. “We always knew it was a strong possibility since both his father and paternal grandfather died from Huntington's, but when Brian turned forty and hadn't shown any symptoms, we fooled ourselves that he'd beat the odds. That's when we started adoption proceedings for you.” She looked down at her lap, where her paint-stained fingers curled around each other, the knuckles white. “Then I got sick and everything changed.” She managed a trembly smile. “You know all about that, don't you. Anyway, three years after Brian died I remarried.”

That explained something. “You took your new husband's name.” Once I turned eighteen and had been released from CPS custody, I'd tried to find Madeline, but her change of residence, coupled with a name change, had been too much for my then non-existent detecting skills. Believing she must have died, I consigned her to my past.

“Looking back,” she continued, “I can see that I must have married out of grief because Jim and I had nothing in common. He thought art was a hobby, and I thought the same thing about his interest in sports. Did I mention that he was once a minor league baseball player, a pitcher? I must have been temporarily insane to think it would work out.”

Warren's face emerged into my consciousness. “Opposites can attract.”

“In the beginning, maybe. Not during the long haul.”

The waiter saved me from replying by bringing Madeline's Rainbow Wonder and my vegetarian spare ribs. To my surprise, the “ribs” were delicious. Maybe there was something to this vegetarian business after all.

In between bites, Madeline asked me what cases I was working on now. Without naming names, I told her about the faux German and his dashed hopes to marry one of my wealthier clients. To keep my recital upbeat, I followed with funny stories about my work on the TV show
Desert Eagle
, including the eccentricities of the actors and the even more extreme eccentricities of the producers.

When Madeline finished laughing, she said, “I've seen that show. That actress doesn't look Cherokee.”

“The writers are fixing the problem for the next season. If there is a next season.”

We discussed the writers' strike and its impact on my own life. When we'd talked the subject to death, I moved on to Celeste King's murder and Scottsdale's new polygamy compound. Seeing the alarm grow in her eyes, I decided to skip Rosella's and my adventure in northern Arizona.

Madeline looked appalled. “Why do those so-called prophets get by with their behavior? It's out-and-out human slavery. Sex trafficking, too!”

“When people live in those kinds of closed communities, it's almost impossible to gather proof of forced ‘marriage' and child sexual abuse. But proof is needed before CPS and the cops can go in.”

“Sounds like a Catch 22.”

“Exactly.”

“Yet you still fight the good fight.” She shook her head. “How can you continue when it just uncovers so much evil? Don't you ever feel overwhelmed?”

Most of my remembered life I'd felt overwhelmed, but she didn't need to know. “Good people, people like you and Brian, gave me the strength to carry on.”

“We made that much difference? Oh, baby, I hope so. When you first came to us, you looked so lost.”

Lost
was the operative word. No mother. No father. Just a series of foster homes where I'd never fit in. I'd been lost, all right, and maybe I still was. Segueing away from this startling revelation, I steered the conversation onto a safer subject. “On the way over here, you mentioned you'd had a recent show just outside New York City. How'd that go?”

A rueful smile. “Same old, same old. Decent reviews, crappy sales. Art, you have to love it or leave it, because you sure as hell don't make much of a living at it.”

After that pronouncement, I refused to let her stay in the cheap Phoenix motel she'd booked, so as soon as we finished lunch I drove her back to Desert Investigations and carried her suitcases upstairs to my apartment.

She stumbled her way through the packing cartons, listening to my explanation about Warren's new house, hardly commenting on my reluctance to move. But at the sight of the vivid oil painting on my living room wall, Madeline's jaw dropped. “Holy shit, what's that?”

“Apache Sunset
, by George Haozous. According to him, it's a historically accurate rendition of an Apache village massacre by the U.S. Cavalry.”

“Something tells me Haozous is Apache.”

“Gee, how could you tell?”

“Because for a change, the Indians are the victims, not the cavalry.” Madeline's smile was wry. “It's always good to see the other side of the story, cracked heads, trailing intestines, and the other bodily wonders. Besides, all that red looks great in your living room. Matches the Navajo print on your sofa.”

I ushered her and her suitcases into the bedroom.

After taking a deep breath, she said, “Oh, my God. You re-created it.”

I set the suitcases next to the bed. “What do you mean, ‘re-created'? I just bought this stuff from a Glendale antique shop because I thought it was cute.”