Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (11 page)

“You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?”

I shook my head.

He took a deep breath and began to explain. “Do you know about the mergers?”

I repeated what Megan had told me.

“Good. Here's what she left out. Up until the mergers, books were seen as an art form, or at the very least, a craft. But the MBAs the publishing consortiums brought in saw books merely as commercial products, no different than dish detergent or cars. Products that didn't sell were dropped from the production line. Authors who didn't increase their sales volume more than fifteen percent each year lost their contracts, regardless of their standing in the literary community. This happened to.…” He rolled out the names of several authors I recognized.

“The good news for Patriot's Blood is that all this writing talent is still out there hunting for new publishers,” Zach continued. “Megan's been pressuring me to sign some of them, especially the mystery authors. Business-wise, she's probably right. She does seem to have a good head on her shoulders where money's concerned.”

I heard the hesitation in his voice. “But?”

“But that's not where my heart is. I'm more interested in literary non-fiction and non-linear transformative works.”

Non-linear transformative works? “Is there money in, uh, non-linear…?”

“Who knows? Not enough material's been printed to find out. But Patriot's Blood will start publishing real literature again, not racist rants. I've never believed that the word ‘patriot' should be a synonym for hate.”

My sympathies were with him there, but I had a job to do, and bemoaning the current state of American publishing wasn't it. “As you said earlier, it sure sounds like you have an excellent motive for murder.” I watched his face carefully.

“People have killed for less,” he agreed, snapping the “Border Run” CD into its plastic case and tossing it into a waste basket. “Not that my denial will mean anything to you, but rest assured I didn't murder my grandmother. Someone else did, and I don't have the foggiest idea who, except that it wasn't Owen.”

“You were on the hike, and you were sitting near Gloriana at the banquet.”

“Yes to both. Before you ask, no, I didn't pick any plants. And at the banquet, everyone at my table was so deep in conversation that we didn't notice anything wrong until my grandmother collapsed.”

“You didn't see anyone fooling around with Gloriana's salad?”

“How could I? I'd been next door attending a seminar on offshore printing, and by the time I made it into the banquet hall, the salads were already on the tables. Anyway, haven't you ever been to one of these things? They're zoos. People are always walking back and forth between the tables, going over to say hello to friends, keeping an eye on competitors, that sort of thing. A kangaroo wearing a tutu could have hopped by singing ‘Waltzing Matilda' and I wouldn't have noticed.”

It sounded reasonable, but most lies did. I switched tactics. “You don't seem too broken up over your grandmother's death.”

He frowned. “Then you're not a very good observer, Ms. Jones. Despite her faults, and they were legion, I was very fond of my grandmother.”

Was he referring to his red eyes? Well, Dusty had frequently sported red eyes, too, and I had just learned that they had more to do with a drinking problem than grief. No point in alienating Zach, though. “I'm sure you were. By the way, was that Gloriana's office we passed on the way in here?”

“Want access?”

“I'd appreciate it.”

His frown turned to a smile. “No problem. I have nothing to hide, do I?”

I spread my hands and smiled back, but said nothing.

He chuckled. “You're a hard woman, Ms. Jones. Tell you what. I'll unlock everything for you, but then you're on your own. I've got a date with a bail bondsman. Owen's been in jail too long.”

Startled, I said, “You're going to leave me alone in Gloriana's office?”

“Why not? As I told you, I have nothing to hide, other than some pretty embarrassing books and games, but since those were all Gloriana's projects, not mine.…”

He let the sentence trail off as he ushered me down the hall to Gloriana's office, calling to his cousin to give me any kind of help I needed after he had left for the bail bondsman's. Most people would have interpreted such openness and cooperation as signs of innocence, but past experience had taught me better. Any sensitive information in Gloriana's office would have already been erased.

But I was wrong.

Chapter 8

Gloriana's office was the opposite of her grandson's. Large. Light-filled. Luxurious. Obsessively neat.

Sun streamed in from a pair of tall French windows, creating creamy rectangles on the hand-tied carpet covering the saltillo-tiled floor. Against gold brocaded walls, glass-fronted floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves groaned with Patriot's Blood's products, almost but not quite overpowering her massive, hand-carved desk. Several leather-covered chairs anchored the rug, the largest of which sat behind the desk. I imagined Gloriana sitting in it, dreaming up new vehicles of hate. The only incongruous element in the room was the battered old Underwood typewriter that squatted in the center of the desk.

“My grandmother didn't trust computers for her own writing,” Zach explained, as he unlocked the drawers to the desk, then did the same for the closed bookcases and the bank of steel file cabinets underneath a large oil painting of Gloriana herself. I'd seen posed photographs of her on the society pages of the
Scottsdale Journal,
of course, but society shots seldom reveal their subject's personality. This portrait did. The artist had portrayed her seated in her mahogany-on-mahogany office, dressed in a gray suit, holding a gold pen in her hand. In the only apparent concession to aesthetics, the bulky Underwood had been replaced by a vase of red, white, and blue peonies.

At first, the portrait seemed little different from any which could be found in a thousand boardrooms across the country. A closer study showed that the artist had a unique talent for revealing more about his subject than his subject probably realized. He had captured arrogance in the uplifted chin, greed in the narrowed eyes, and—incongruously—a hint of sensitivity in the thin-lipped mouth. I peered at the artist's signature: Pearl Tuc Nguyen.

I turned away from the portrait and gestured toward the typewriter. “Zach, you mentioned something about your grandmother's writing. Did you mean business correspondence?”

“No, she dictated that. I'm talking about her memoir-cum-family history,” he answered, unlocking the last file cabinet. “The Alden ancestry was her true obsession. To hear her talk, you'd think we Aldens rowed the Mayflower across the Atlantic all by ourselves. Her opinions should have made intriguing reading, but from the few pages she showed me, she didn't have much writing talent. It's my guess our ancestors were a lot more interesting, not to mention less saintly, than the flag-waving stereotypes she created.

“As for dramatic tension, well, even memoirs need focus and an arc of action, but she was weak there, too. If she'd been in one of my writing classes at ASU, I'd have flunked her. But that's all water under the bridge. Since she's dead, I doubt if her scribblings will ever see the light of day. They would have been nothing but a vanity project anyway, printed by her own publishing house because no one else would want to publish them. Now you'll have to excuse me.” He pocketed the keys, then started for the door.

“Zach, wait!” I had to scratch an itch, whether it helped solve Gloriana's murder or not.

He turned back around, his ugly/handsome face a study in impatience. “Make it quick.”

“I'm appreciative that you're giving me free rein in her office, but I've always felt that seeing where someone lives, how they live, can tell even more about them than their working environment.” Certainly about the secrets they kept. “Do you think I could take a look at the Hacienda?”

He didn't say anything at first, and I feared I had lost his good will. But then he said, “Why not? I consider Owen a friend, and if it'll help him.…” He picked up the phone on Gloriana's desk. After punching in a number and waiting mere seconds for an answer, he began speaking in fluent Spanish to the party on the other end of the line.

Even with my rudimentary Spanish I could follow that he was telling Gloriana's maid to let me in the house, to stay with me and make certain I removed nothing, but to give me total access.

“What time can you get up there?” he said, holding the phone away from my ear. “Rosa has tomorrow off, so if you're going, it has to be today.”

I figured that it would take me a couple of hours to go through Gloriana's office, probably less at the house. Then I remembered that I had another appointment, one I didn't dare break.

I looked at my watch. “Is five o'clock too late?”

He checked with Rosa again. “Five is fine. Rosa's been with my grandmother for going on thirty years, so she can give you the grand tour and tell you anything you need to know. She liked Owen, too.” Scribbling the address down, he said, “Honk three times at the gate,” then turned and left me standing alone in the office.

Did he trust me that much? Or was his apparent openness a ploy to make me believe he had nothing to hide? If so, it backfired. His apparent lack of concern, an attitude I had seen in many convicted murderers, put me on my guard.

I dropped the keys into my carry-all, gave Gloriana's portrait one final look, and then proceeded to burrow my way through her papers. Most, I discovered, related strictly to the business. Invoices for printing (I'd never realized it cost so much), gargantuan shipping invoices (per cubic inch, books were apparently heavier than pianos), and all the usual odds and ends relating to any business. Electric bills, plumbing bills (three in the last year for the office toilet alone), and bills from a cleaning service.

I found her memoir filed under M, what else? A quick look at the last page—page 203, in which Gloriana reflected on the family's role in the American Revolution—warned that my original time estimate was way off. A cursory read-through of a few pages proved that Zach's literary critique had been dead-on. Gloriana's writing might have been serviceable enough for business correspondence, but even to my own unliterary ear, the style seemed weak. So weak that even the Mayflower's voyage—which I'd been taught in school had been fraught with thrills and chills—sounded dull. I decided to get back to the memoirs later so I set them aside and scanned through other material.

The R for “Rejections” file was more entertaining. A few authors had taken rejection hard, firing back letters of protest. One such letter, dated several months back, said, “Ms. Alden-Taylor, you wouldn't recognize talent if a B-52 dropped it on your head in a sack. I hope you choke, bitch. Sincerely yours, Sanford Leavitt.”

I looked at the envelope stapled to the letter and saw a Hartford, Connecticut, postmark. Would a rejectee travel more than two thousand miles to bump off his rejector? Doubtful.

A few more letters from rejected authors echoed Leavitt's opinion of Gloriana, but their postmarks bore addresses also too far away to worry about, at least for now. Still, I took note of the names. Regardless of current security measures and rising fuel prices, air travel remained relatively fast and cheap. Of more interest was a series of letters written on Arizona Department of Corrections stationery which revealed an ongoing correspondence between Gloriana and Barry Fetzner, one of Patriot's Blood's authors. The first letter, dated a year earlier, expressed gushing delight that Patriot's Blood had found
A Man Stands Alone
deserving of publication.

At last a publisher of INTEGRITY, a publisher who has found the advancement of TRUTH superior to the mindless pursuit of MAMMON
, wrote Fetzner, A.K.A. Inmate No. 947303-37. Fetzner (the name sounded familiar but I couldn't quite place it) continued purring with gratified ego for a month or so, then eventually began to express irritation at Gloriana's request for manuscript changes.

What I said in the third paragraph on page 42 is perfectly clear to ANYONE with even MINIMAL I.Q. But if you INSIST I will comply. After all, my warning to the AMERICAN people is more important than your CONSTANT QUIBBLING over STYLE
.

Maybe Gloriana had told him to knock off the upper case.

Last month, the tone of Fetzner's correspondence changed dramatically. In a letter wild with caps and underlinings, he informed Gloriana that he had decided against publication, and demanded that she return his manuscript. Gloriana wrote back that she was holding him to the terms of the SIGNED contract (caps hers). His book was already at the binder's. Fetzner fired back another letter threatening a lawsuit.

Gloriana didn't answer, or at least I didn't find a copy of her answer. But I did find one last letter from Fetzner, postmarked the week before Gloriana's death.

I repeat, HAG, you must STOP, CEASE, DESIST publication of A MAN STANDS ALONE immediately. This is an ORDER from GOD'S AVENGER HIMSELF, and you WILL OBEY or be subject to the DIREST of CONSEQUENCES! YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE! What I have learned about you, MRS. LIAR, proves that you and your FELLOW TRAVELERS AT PATRIOT'S BLOOD are UNFIT to carry my HOLY MESSAGE to the FAITHFUL. You hid your true nature well, but I NOW know you are the ENEMY, you are a TRAITOR to your BLOOD, you are herewith sentenced to HELL AND DAMNATION. And you can FORGET the sequel
.

“God's Avenger!” I whispered. Now I remembered. Fetzner had been sentenced to death for killing seven Hispanic prostitutes working Phoenix's red light district on Van Buren Boulevard. Or at least he'd been convicted of seven killings. We suspected Fetzner had been responsible for nineteen. He would pose as a customer and lure the working girls into his car. Then, after knocking them out with the wrench he kept on his front seat, he would drive them into the desert where he disemboweled their still-living bodies. Real Jack the Ripper stuff.

In the notes he left at the scenes—the man was proud of his work—he accused the women of breaking “
GOD'S HOLY LAW
” and contributing to the weakening of “
GOD'S HOLY SPIRIT IN MAN
.”

He signed them, “
GOD'S AVENGER
.”

I had encountered Fetzner once. Lucky Lil, as prostitute Lilly Salazar had been dubbed by the press, had been staked out in the desert a few miles east of Scottsdale and was actually watching Fetzner's knife descend when two Pima men rode their horses onto the scene and broke up the party. God's Avenger managed to run back to his car and speed away. He'd taken the trouble to rub mud onto his license plate, but both Pimas had seen his face. As, of course, had Lucky Lil. The subsequent IdentiKit rendering resembled a man who had recently spent a night in our drunk tank. My partner and I were among the hordes of uniforms dispatched to his Scottsdale apartment as backup for the detectives.

Fetzner hadn't put up a fight. He had been so certain that the legal system would reward him for ridding the world of sin that he cheerfully confessed. The surprise on his face when he was sentenced to death had been highly gratifying to the prosecutor.

Fetzner was nuts, of course, but the court ruled that since he could tell the difference between right and wrong, he was legally sane. The Arizona Supreme Court and then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had both upheld his conviction. As far as I knew, he was still slated for execution within the month unless the U.S. Supreme Court found constitutional problems in his trial.

I had heard that while awaiting the needle, Fetzner had become involved with the Aryan Brotherhood, as did so much of the prison's rough trade, which might explain how his memoirs eventually wound up at Patriot's Blood. With Fetzner's hatred of women in general and of Gloriana in particular, he made a tempting suspect. Yes, it would probably be difficult to sprinkle water hemlock on someone's salad when you were locked behind several feet of reinforced concrete, steel, and razor wire, but the Aryan Brotherhood's arms were long. Easily long enough to reach all the way from Florence to the Desert Shadows resort.

As I mulled over this new element, Poor Sandra stuck her head in the office.

“I'm going to lunch, so I'd appreciate it if you would, uh.…”

“Leave?” I offered.

She gave me an embarrassed smile of agreement, which turned to horror when she saw Gloriana's memoirs spread across the desk.

“Do you think you could copy all this before you go?” I asked her. “I've checked out most of the other stuff, but I wasn't able to get to these.”

Poor Sandra's face crumpled, but she nodded. “I'd be happy to.”

As I followed her to the copier, I wondered if being kicked down a flight of stairs also made her happy. “How long have you worked here?” I asked, merely to make conversation as she fed sheets to the machine, which began to spew smudgy-looking copies.

“Since my husband left me,” Poor Sandra replied. “That's two years ago.”

“Do you like your job?”

“Not much.”

“Can't you get a job anywhere else?”

“Probably. But Gloriana not only gave me a decent paycheck, she let me live in the servant's quarters for about half the rent I'd have to pay elsewhere.”

“That was nice of her.”

“First time I've ever heard that word in connection with Gloriana.” As Poor Sandra was about to continue, the copier made a rattling sound, followed by a heavy clank. Then, with an almost human grunt of spite, it shut down.

“Broke again,” she moaned. “Just like the toilet. Everything in this office is falling apart. God, it's like the Hacienda. Maybe you could come back next week? We should have it fixed by then, and I'll have someone run off those copies for you.”

I hated to leave the unread memoirs in the office and told her so. “Why don't you let me take them with me? My office is right down the street. I can copy them myself, then bring them back tomorrow morning good as new.”

She shook her head. “Regardless of my feelings about Gloriana, this manuscript represents almost four hundred years of Alden-Taylor family history. I can't simply let it walk out the door.”

Disappointed, I fished a business card out of my carry-all. “Could you give me a call as soon as the copier is fixed?”