Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (23 page)

And Dusty's pistol-packing redhead with it.

“You'll need to paint,” the drywall guy said, interrupting my murderous thoughts. “I think that's Navajo White up there, but I'm no expert. Maybe you want to throw a little color in here, too.”

Maybe. Those white walls sure didn't do much for the beige carpet, beige sofa, and beige coffee table.

But who cared? The apartment was a place to eat and sleep. Nothing else. It wasn't a home. There was no kidding myself. I'd never had a home and probably never would.

***

When I maneuvered my crutches into Verdad Press an hour later, Emil Ramos was adding another book to a shelf in the reception area. The bell tingled and he looked around, his expression forming into dismay. He hurriedly masked it with his usual smile.

“Ah, Miss Jones, it is so nice to see you alive.”

His words startled me until I realized that I had not seen Ramos since the Patriot's Blood bombing. “I think it's nice to see me alive, too, Mr. Ramos. How goes the book business?”

He patted the book into place, then stepped away from the bookcase. “We are still waiting for the Hispanic Michael Crichton to appear on our doorstep. Other than that, business is fine. But I am certain you did not drive up here to discuss the ins and outs of the publishing business. What may I help you with this time?”

As he led me to the conference room, I told him what I'd discovered about Gloriana, that her perceived racism appeared to be more financial than heart-felt. Ramos didn't appear as surprised as I'd thought he would.

“That makes her behavior even worse,” he said, helping me into my seat.

My thoughts, too. But I asked him why.

He settled back into his chair, his face troubled. “To do what you believe in, that is the course of action all honest men and women should follow, even to the death. But to spread such lies only for money, that is unforgivable. The poor, yes, they frequently commit terrible acts to feed themselves or their children, or even out of some other desperate need. Gloriana Alden-Taylor had none of these excuses. She was born into wealth. How can her greed ever be understood?”

“She wasn't born into as much wealth as you think.” I explained Gloriana's financial situation, the condition of the family home.

The troubled look cleared. “Then I understand.”

I heard a noise behind me, and turned to see John Alden Brookings, ensconced again in his wheelchair, leading an elderly lady down the hall. He gave me a curt nod, then rolled into a small office with her and closed the door.

“One of Mr. Brookings' private clients,” Ramos explained. “But he will be leaving soon to return to Patriot's Blood. I suppose I should be happy for him, but now I must find another bilingual editor. The hiring process always depresses me. There are so many good people out of work these days, and I cannot help them all.”

I sympathized, but steered him away from what looked to be the beginnings of a long monologue by asking my next question. “Mr. Ramos, you said you understand Gloriana's behavior. What did you mean by that?”

“Ah, Ms. Jones. People will kill, or even die, to protect their homes, so if Gloriana loved her Hacienda as much as you say, then I am not surprised by anything she did. We had such a case in my own family, an elderly relative who refused to leave her adobe even as the bulldozers pushed down the walls.”

Could the world really be that small? “Mr. Ramos, are you talking about the adobes that were razed for the new art museum?”

I'd worked that case, a very messy one which had almost gotten me killed. As it had turned out, a member of that old woman's family—the woman who had preferred to die with her house—saved my life. This put me in a difficult ethical position. Yet, for all Ramos' Old World courtesy, he could still be a murderer.

“Why, yes,” Ramos said, surprised. “The woman involved, Magdalena Espinoza, was my great-aunt.”

It was true, then. Pushing aside my moral qualms, I decided that the past is the past, and that whatever Ramos' kin had done for me, he himself had played no part in it. But even if he had, I was still a detective.

There was no point in letting Ramos know about my ties to his family, so I barged ahead. “I think I remember reading about her. It was a very sad situation.”

He nodded. “You see what I am saying, then. For people who are no longer young, a home can be a sacred thing, especially for a proud woman like Gloriana Alden-Taylor. But I understand something else about the woman now, too.”

Then he was doing better than me. I just couldn't seem to get a fix on Gloriana. “What do you understand about her?”

“Great love, great desire—they often go hand in hand with great blindness.”

I frowned. “What do you mean, great blindness?”

He looked around at the bookcases in the room, the proof of his own great desires. “You Anglos have the saying, ‘Love is blind,' which is, of course, true. We all know that no one is more blind to ugly truths than a lover. But when passions cool, vision clears; the floodlight of truth reveals all. If that revealed truth is unacceptable, a great hatred will grow in its place, a hatred as great as the passions that came before. Did such a thing happen to Gloriana Alden-Taylor? Did the thing she once loved become her great hate? And is that why she had to die?”

***

“Did the thing she once loved become her great hate?”

Ramos' words stayed with me as I hobbled across the parking lot to Arizona Trails Publishing and the offices of David Zhang.

What did Gloriana love? Her exalted lineage. Her crumbling Hacienda. And, possibly, Owen.

Who or what had she turned against? And why?

Zhang was in, but the young woman who stuck her head around the corner told me he was finishing up an editorial conference and asked me to wait. She then disappeared again.

I settled myself and my crutches on a sleek chair designed more for looks than comfort and flipped through a stack of magazines on the side table:
Road and Track,
American Baby,
Cosmopolitan.
Not being all that interested in cars, and even less in babies, I picked up the
Cosmopolitan.
I'd begun reading an article titled “Jealousy: The Most Destructive of the Seven Deadly Sins,” when I heard approaching voices.

David Zhang, and a mellifluous baritone it was hard to forget. Chaps Peterson, the cowboy poet. What was he doing here?

Intrigued, I watched as Zhang, who hadn't yet spotted me, shook hands with Chaps at the door. “I'm looking forward to a long and profitable relationship,” Zhang said, his salesman's smile wide, bright, and phoney.

“Right, pardner, we'll be riding a lot of fence together in the next few years,” Chaps agreed. His too-overt “cowhand” accent sounded off today, but maybe it was just me.

With a tip of his weatherbeaten hat, Chaps finally exited, leaving Zhang in the doorway.

“Ahem.” I gave him a wave.

Zhang's brilliant smile dimmed for a nanosecond and I caught a flash of temper in his eyes. Then the smile flared again. “Why, Miss Jones! How nice to see you again!” His professed joy sounded every bit as phoney as Chaps' accent.

Before I could say anything, Zhang made a show of checking his watch. “Look at the time! We're about to close up. Perhaps you can come back tomorrow?”

There's a reason detectives like to drop in on people unannounced. Why give suspects time to perfect their lies?

“I have a couple more questions,” I said, delivering a whopper of my own. “I'll be out of your hair in no time.”

“Make it quick then.” Unlike Ramos, Zhang didn't invite me into the conference room. Instead, he perched himself on the chair across from me as if to punctuate the lateness of the hour.

“Wasn't that Chaps Peterson I saw leaving?” I asked.

Zhang looked relieved. “Yes, it was. We signed him to a three-book contract.”

So much for Arizona flora and fauna. “I didn't know Arizona Trails published Chaps' kind of work.”

“I've been thinking of branching out into other areas of Southwestern interest, and since Mr. Peterson is one of the most popular poets around, why not?”

I noticed that he said
most popular
, not best. But when I mentioned his lapse, he laughed.

“Whoever said publishing is about quality hasn't studied the bestseller list lately. It's a freak show, Miss Jones, top heavy with wrestlers, teenage pop stars, and political has-beens confessing their sexual peccadillos. Mediocre books produced by mediocre ghostwriters. Perhaps publishing used to be about developing talent and producing the best books possible, but today it's all showmanship and sales. And when it comes to showmanship, Chaps is one of the best salesmen around. In fact, I am so confident of that I am sending him on a ten-state book tour when his first collection rolls off the press. As I am sure you noticed at the Festival of the West, people from the East Coast lap up the cowboy business.”

And the cowboys themselves. Look at Joanne's passion for Dusty. But I didn't have time to worry about her now. “Speaking of the East Coast, don't I detect a wee bit of Brooklyn in Chaps' accent?”

Zhang's face closed down again. “Chaps assured me that not only was he was born and raised in Arizona, but also that his father and both grandfathers were cowboys.”

Well, yippee-ki-yo-ki-yay, youse guys. There seemed to be no point in raining on Chaps' parade when I had other issues to pursue. “Better have him watch those Brooklyn ‘R's then. But back to what I came here for. As you must surely know, someone bombed Patriot's Blood last week. Do you have any idea who might have done that?” Not that he would tell me if he did.

Zhang looked relieved at the change of subject. “If the bombing had happened before Gloriana died, I could have said anyone. The NAACP. The Jewish Defense League. PETA, even, because some of that racist propaganda she published has been urging the Aryan types to eat more meat. You know the kind of thing, ‘Real racists don't eat quiche.' But everyone knew that Zach was going to change editorial policy as soon as he took over, so fire-bombing the place just as he'd started to do so makes no sense to me.”

It didn't make any sense to me, either. Something else bothered me, too. “Are you aware of the material Zach wants to publish now?”

Zhang laughed so hard he almost fell down. “Oh, God, yes!” he finally managed, wiping his eyes. “Look, Zach's a great guy and all that, a heart of gold under all that literary pretentiousness, but the man has no financial sense. I'm betting he'll run through Gloriana's money in a year, two at the outside. Nobody's going to buy that…” here he drew out the word “…
LIT-ER-AH-TURE
. He's his grandmother all over again, blind to everything except his own obsession. At least old Gloriana understood money.”

His praise for Gloriana surprised me, and I told him so.

“Oh, well,” he said, shrugging. “At Harvard, where I received my MBA, they teach you great respect for money. And the people who make it.”

Chapter 26

On my way back to the office, I stopped by the site where Patriot's Blood once stood.

The area was surrounded by a hastily erected fence, built without even sight holes for the customary sidewalk superintendents. As a further deterrent to gawkers, Day-Glo CRIME SCENE stickers plastered all over the barrier warned people to keep their distance. I prowled back and forth along the fence in the dimming light, looking for entry but finding none. It probably didn't make any difference, since I doubted if the ATF had left behind anything worthwhile. After I had circled the perimeter several times, a cool rain began to fall. When it hit the ash on the other side of the fence, the acrid smell of burned wood expanded for a moment, then dissipated.

As I hurried back to the Neon, I wondered if Gloriana's memoirs had perished, too. The file cabinet storing them had looked fireproof, but I doubted if it was blast proof.

For some reason, I was reluctant to leave. While the rain fell, I sat in the Neon, staring at the remains of Gloriana's dreams.

***

I was stepping out of the shower, getting ready to towel off, when someone knocked on my door.

Not Dusty's knock. Not Jimmy's.

Throwing on a robe, I grabbed my .38 and limped to the door. On the other side of the peephole stood Joanne, her wet red hair plastered to her head, a forlorn expression on her face.

“Put down your purse and show you hands!” I called through the door.

She did.

“Now take off your coat, lift up your blouse, and turn around!”

She did that, too, revealing that she didn't need a bra to keep her implants pointed north.

Satisfied, I delivered the required warning. “Joanne, I'm letting you in, but be warned that I've got a gun, and unlike you, I know how to use it. Your handbag stays outside.”

She nodded wetly, and I opened the door, grateful that I had left my crutches in the bedroom. I did not want her to know how vulnerable I felt.

“Close the door behind you,” I ordered, as she stepped through. “But don't lock it. You may be leaving real fast.”

Still obedient, Joanne did exactly as I said. “May I sit down?”

I waved the revolver toward the beige corner chair that faced the door. “Sit. Speak. Then get the hell out.”

She shuffled over to the chair and sat down. “I brought my checkbook. I want to pay for the damage I caused before I fly out in the morning.”

On her broom, no doubt. “Stay where I can see you.” I kept the gun on her as I eased myself out the door and recovered the handbag she'd obediently left on the landing. Still covering her with my gun, I rifled through the thing (Hermes, real leather, what appeared to be solid silver clasps) and found the checkbook in a side flap next to an expensive-looking pen. I tossed both to her.

“How much?” she asked.

I told her.

“May I see the invoice?”

“Only if you promise to shove it where the sun don't shine.”

She blinked. “There's no need to be rude.”

Did tourists leave their brains at the airport? “Joanne, you couldn't get a Manhattan pedicure for the amount I quoted.”

She shook her head, and a few wet strands fell across her forehead. “I need to give it to my accountant.”

“Just write, ‘For drywall damage incurred during attempted double homicide' on the subject line.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and wrote out the check.

“Drop it on the floor.”

The check fluttered to the beige carpet.

“Bye.” I motioned the gun toward the door.

“No, wait.”

What now?

“I want my gun back.”

I began to laugh. “Are you completely out of your mind? Give you back the gun you tried to kill me with? As far as I'm concerned, it's finders keepers.”

Joanne frowned. “That was a very expensive gun.” The amount she quoted me made me raise my eyebrows.

“A Desert Eagle only runs about half of that. Next time you want to shoot someone, do a little comparison shopping first.” But I suspected why the gun cost her so much. Not being an Arizona resident, Joanne would have trouble purchasing legal firearms on the spur of the moment here. She'd gone off-market.

“You're going to keep my gun? Well, maybe I should tear up my check!” She made as if to pick the check up off the floor, but froze when I cocked the hammer on the .38.

“Time to leave now, Joanne.”

She burst into tears.

Normally, women's tears do not affect me. I know how easily they can be manufactured, but Joanne's held real heartache. Her haggling had been mere camouflage.

I eased the hammer home and let her cry until her sobs settled into mere gulps. “You're not getting the Desert Eagle back and from the looks of you, you're not getting Dusty, either. It's time to cut your losses and go back to where you know how to play the game.”

“It wasn't a game,” she said miserably. “I love him. When I was with him, it was like having a different life, a better life than product pitches and idea meetings. Dusty was from another world. Handsome. Tough. And yet so, so tender. I'd never met anyone like him before.”

Poor bitch. Softening my voice, I said, “The point is, he doesn't love you, regardless of what he said while he was drunk.”

“He lied?”

“Men do lie to women, Joanne.” I wondered how often Dusty had lied to me. Not recently, I hoped. Then I remembered some of the things I'd told him. “And sometimes women lie back.”

“He won't talk to me. And they won't even let me on the ranch property now.”

“Then it's time to go back to New York. I'm sure if you look hard enough, you can find a handsome, tough, and tender man there, too. It's a big city.”

She gave a heavy, trembling sigh. “This has all been such a mess.”

I agreed with her. “It sure has, Joanne. Good-bye.” I stepped away from the door.

She got up, leaving the check lying on the floor. “Tell Dusty… well, tell him I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused.”

“Will do.”

She started to leave, then stopped.

I raised the .38 again. “What is it now?”

Her eyes were bleak. “He told me…he told me you didn't love him. That you couldn't love anyone. Is it true?”

I did not answer, because I did not know the truth. “Good-bye, Joanne.”

As soon as she walked through the door, I bolted it behind her.