Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (5 page)

Then something else occurred to me, something that might help ease the pressure on Owen. “When you all got back to the resort, did you hear anyone talking about the water hemlock?”

Zhang nodded. “Yeah, Randall Ott was pretty ticked that some Indian had dared tell him what to do. I think most people ignored him, though.”

Maybe, and maybe not. For the first time that day I began to feel optimistic about Owen's prospects. Not only did the hiking party know about the poisonous plant, but so did anyone else who had been on the receiving end of Ott's complaints. As for the others at SOBOP, I had already noticed that the book I bought from Zhang's display contained a full-color picture of the plant. The page even carried a bold type warning, in red, which detailed its poisonous parts: namely, all of them. I did a quick mental calculation. Anyone intent on killing Gloriana could drive back up to Oak Creek in under two hours, pick more hemlock, and return to the resort before the salad course was set out in the banquet hall. With the various seminars continuing throughout the day, one person's absence wouldn't be noticed. Unless.…

“Did anyone not turn up where he was supposed to? Like on a panel?” I asked the Rev.

The Rev thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Not that I've heard.”

Means and opportunity enough for everyone then, not just Owen. But what about motive? My early years with the police had taught me that barring the odd serial killer, gang banger action, or sloppier-than-usual robberies, the solution to a murder usually lay in the victim's own life. All I had to do was find out enough about Gloriana Alden-Taylor to determine who hated the woman enough to kill her.

“You gentlemen have been a great help,” I told the three, reserving my warmest smile for the Rev. “One more question and then I'll let you get back to your display booth. I only met Gloriana once, so I don't know much about her. Tell me, what was she really like?”

From the frost that swept over the picnic table, you'd think a glacier had dropped from the skies. None of the men, including the Rev, seemed inclined to answer.

I waited until Emil Ramos, his eyes glittering with hatred, said, “Miss Jones, you want to know what she was like? Then I will tell you. Gloriana Alden-Taylor would disgust the Devil.”

Chapter 4

Nearby, two “Indians” from indeterminate tribes told jokes in Brooklyn accents, while their three children, dressed as cowboys, play-shot each other with plastic guns. In front of the Old West Saloon, one stuntman punched another, who then rolled dramatically across the dirt, screaming old-time epithets while tourists' cameras snapped. Near the Overland Stage Stop, Wyatt Earp and his posse swaggered toward the Clantons, long-barreled firearms at the ready.

Glamorized killing, therefore not my problem. I specialized in the real deal.

As I looked into Zhang's and the Rev's eyes, I saw agreement with Ramos' shocking statement. Gloria Alden-Taylor had no admirers here.

“Perhaps you'd care to explain, Mr. Ramos.”

“I would be happy to explain her evil if you have a free year or two in your schedule, Ms. Jones,” Ramos answered, his words like razors. “But why do you not simply look at the Patriot's Blood catalog? The titles alone will tell you the kind of person Gloriana was.” He closed his eyes and began to recite. “
Black and Brown: A History of the Degenerate Races.
” Or perhaps “
The Mexican Mud People.
” When he opened his eyes, the depths of hatred there frightened me.

The Rev cleared his throat. “I'm sure you realize by now that Gloriana's publishing house specializes in books that take an extreme political view. They are very, very troubling to large numbers of people, myself included.”

Zhang's ire simmered only slightly less than Ramos'. “Randall Ott's book is disgusting, of course, but the idiot doesn't yet advocate killing immigrants at the border, or at least he didn't the last time I talked to him. Some of Gloriana's other authors actually do. As a publisher myself I have a strong commitment to the First Amendment, but as far as I'm concerned, in this political climate, Gloriana wasn't simply yelling ‘Fire!' in a crowded theater. She was carrying gas cans toward the flames.”

I agreed. In the light of recent events, what Gloriana had been doing was unconscionable. Two days after 9/11, a Scottsdale convenience store clerk had been shot dead by a gun-toting “patriot” too ignorant to know a Sikh from an Arab. Since then, many of the city's frightened Saudis, Pakistanis, and Egyptians had changed their phone numbers to unlisted ones and begun wearing Western dress to their mosques. Yet under the banner of patriotism, domestic terrorism continued to increase.

“Were Gloriana's books just money-makers, or did they reflect her personal beliefs?” I asked Zhang. Not that it made any difference. Gasoline is gasoline, whether you like the smell or not.

Zhang looked baffled. “I'm not certain. She didn't seem particularly bothered to be seated at our table. And don't forget, she arranged that hiking trip for us. Even after she'd seen the color of our skins.”

“But she didn't go along.”

“No, she didn't,” he said. “Looking back on it, the whole thing was odd. But who's going to pass up a trip to Oak Creek, with somebody else paying for the gas? Certainly not me.”

Something else seemed odd, too. “Who was in charge of the seating arrangements? Considering everything.…” I didn't bother to state the obvious.

Ramos actually blushed. “I am sorry to tell you that my wife Beatrice was responsible for the seating. She knows few of the publishers personally, most are just names to her. After she sketched a preliminary seating chart, she did ask me to go over it, but I became so busy with other organizational details that I forgot. Later, when Beatrice realized what had happened, she blamed herself.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness, his thick gold wedding band glinting in the sun. “I am still trying to convince her that Gloriana's death was not her fault, that if it had not happened at SOBOP, it would probably have happened elsewhere.”

Perhaps. But perhaps not. Someone with a grudge might simply have seized the day.

Ramos started to say something else, but just then a group of young men veered toward us. As they walked by, one of them—a buzz-cut bodybuilder—bumped him. Hard. Ramos, shock on his face, grabbed the edge of the picnic table to keep from being knocked to the ground. When he recovered his balance, he looked toward the young man, obviously expecting an apology.

Instead, Buzz Cut spit on the ground, too close to Ramos' feet for comfort, and sauntered back to his friends. He said loudly, “Too much mud around here.”

With a laugh, the group turned on their heels and headed for the Wild West Saloon. As they walked away, I could see that the nape of each man's neck bore a double lighting bolt tattoo. National Alliance thugs. Just one of the many hate groups that had slithered out of Arizona's closet since the 9/11 attacks, soul brothers of the terrorists they claimed to despise.

For a moment I feared Ramos would charge after his assailant, but the Rev placed a warning hand on his arm. “Turn the other cheek,” he said quietly.

“For the millionth time?” But Ramos' fists unclenched as his common sense overrode his Aztec warrior genes. He stared at the men's retreating backs. “Rats always travel in packs, don't they?”

Zhang's answer was less zoological, even less restrained. His own fists remained clenched.

This was no time to indulge the National Alliance's obvious desire for a dust-up, so I ripped a sheet of paper from my notebook and thrust it toward Ramos. “Do me a favor and show me where everyone was seated during the meal, plus all the entry and exit doors to the banquet hall. Write down the names of everyone at your table and the tables next to yours, anyone who had easy access to Gloriana's place setting.” Although the salads had been waiting for the SOBOP people when they entered the banquet hall, there was a chance that the water hemlock had been added later.

Hands still shaking from suppressed rage, Ramos sketched a rough seating chart. Gloriana sat with her niece, Sandra, to her right. Next came Myra Gordon; Zhang; the Rev; Dr. Deborah Messinger, who had administered CPR; Randall Ott; and then, finishing up the table, Emil Ramos on Gloriana's left. At the next table sat Representative Tinsley; Zachary and Megan Alden-Taylor; John Alden Brookings, a free-lance writer whose byline I'd sometimes seen in the
Scottsdale Journal
(a relative of Gloriana's?); “Chaps” Peterson, the cowboy poet I'd heard earlier; and three men whose names I didn't recognize.

“Publishers from California,” Ramos explained when I asked, his voice still tight. At least his hands had steadied. “They were attending the SOBOP Expo for the first time. I do not believe they knew Gloriana at all.”

I looked at the seating chart again, still not finding the name I expected to see. “Where did Owen sit?”

The Rev's voice was almost as tight as Ramos' when he answered. I guessed that the confrontation with the neo-Nazis bothered him more than he cared to admit. “That evening, as with the evening before, Gloriana made Owen sit outside in the corridor on one of those fold-up chairs.”

I took a moment to digest this information. “You mean he wasn't even in the room?”

The Rev shook his head.

No dinner for Owen, then, other than a heaping portion of humiliation. And Owen was a proud man. The more I studied the diagram, the more worried I became. Gloriana's table was located right next to the banquet hall's exit, with a probably furious Owen seated within poisoning distance. Even a Marine can only take so much. How easy it would have been to take the water hemlock he already had in his pocket and….

When I asked about the table's peculiar placement, Zhang gave me a sour smile. “You should have heard Gloriana carry on. Heck, I wasn't that crazy about sitting near the exit, myself. Half the people in the room strolled past us at one time or another, going in and out. Grand Central station, Arizona style.” Then he flushed, probably remembering too late that Ramos' wife had drawn up the chart. “Oh, Emil, I'm sorry. I didn't.…”

Ramos, after giving one last look toward the neo-Nazis, interrupted him. “The table placement was my fault, not Beatrice's. You see, I suffer from diabetes, and I have to get up and down a lot, so to make it easier for me, Beatrice sat me close to the corridor that led to the men's room.”

A whole banquet hall full of suspects, then, walking to and fro past the victim's table on the way to the john. Getting the hemlock onto Gloriana's plate without being seen would have been relatively easy under any circumstances, whether before dinner or during. “Mr. Ramos, how many people attended the banquet?”

When he rubbed his forehead I noticed his hand was still shaking. “There were eight people at each table and there were fifteen tables. A few convention attendees may have missed the banquet, but I do not believe so. We publishers only meet once a year, and the time we spend together is quite valuable.”

One hundred and twenty suspects, then. In actuality, though, the situation wasn't that bad. Merely a handful had opted for the hike and heard Owen's description of the fatal properties of water hemlock. Then I recalled Randall Ott's tirade upon his return to the resort. How many people who hated Gloriana or her publications heard him? I also remembered Zhang's guidebook on Arizona flora and fauna, with its big color illustration of the plant. The caption had read:

Once limited to high mountain wetlands, water hemlock can now be found along the banks of streams lower than 3,000 feet in altitude. For the past few years, it has become profuse near Oak Creek Canyon. Its roots, stems, leaves and blossoms are extremely poisonous. Hikers beware.

“Mr. Zhang, that book of yours on Arizona plants. When was it published?”

In a tired voice, he answered, “Ah, yes, that damned book. It came out six months ago. What you're after, I guess, is how many people at SOBOP could have seen it, and the answer is—just about everyone. It's been on the SOBOP display table at the resort ever since the convention started.” He heaved a sigh. “I have it sitting on a little stand, much as I do here, open to the page on water hemlock. I thought the artist did a great job on the illustration, and I wanted to show it off.”

Even without Owen's creekside lecture, anyone with murder on his mind could probably have identified the plant from the book alone.

Then Zhang's face froze and I turned around, half-expecting to see the National Alliance thugs returning. But no, the man approaching us was merely Randall Ott, his nose raised so high in distaste at the brown skins around him that it was a wonder he didn't trip over Clydesdale crap.

Following closely was Lynn Tinsley, also looking up at the sky. I figured she was on the lookout for black helicopters. Tinsley's hairstyle echoed the Sixties, a blond bubble-do teased within an inch of its life, which made her tower over the minuscule Ott. Her pink shirtwaist dress sported enough ruffles to supply a Barbie Doll warehouse, while her dyed-to-match spike heels hinted at a bit of slut beneath the politico's cotton candy exterior.

“I think it's time for some lunch,” the Rev said to Ramos and Zhang. “You two up for some Navajo tacos?”

They nodded, eager to get away from Ott and Tinsley. As a further inducement—one which I am certain the Rev had planned —the Navajo taco stand was in the opposite direction the neo-Nazis had taken.

I forced a smile as Tinsley and Ott neared the picnic table. Just for Owen, I'd attempt to get on their good side. “Representative Tinsley, Mr. Ott. Would you like some fry bread? I'd be happy to run over to the stand and bring some back.” Truth be told, I was still hungry.

“I'm a vegetarian,” Ott said, settling himself across from me, Tinsley by his side. “Those damned Indians use animal fat in everything. From uninspected pigs, too, probably.” His voice was as thin as his hair.

Tinsley's heavily made-up face maintained that odd rigidity peculiar to Botox users. “Maybe I should look into that.” Her gravelly voice hinted at decades of cigarettes and bourbon.

Ott shook his head. “No point. Their reservation, their rules. You can't change savages, anyway.”

The corners of my mouth began to hurt, so I dropped the forced smile. “Representative Tinsley, I know you're a busy woman, so I'll come straight to the point. I'd like to know what, if anything, you observed on the day Gloriana Alden-Taylor died.”

Ott cleared his throat. “Evening.”

Tinsley rolled her eyes, but her eyebrows remained stationary. “Oh, please.”

Ott's nose actually twitched. “You know I believe in being precise, Lynn. Gloriana died around 7:15 p.m., which makes it
evening.
”

Why did so many anal retentives turn out to be racists? But love is blind, and I caught a hint of affection in Tinsley's eyes as she gazed at him.

“Can we just go on and get this over with, Randall? Ms. Jones is right. I'm a busy woman and I don't have time to sit around here splitting hairs with you.” Turning her attention to me, she said, “I didn't see anything until poor Gloriana started making those terrible noises. I'd been busy talking to Chaps Peterson.” She motioned down the hill where the poet was still spinning his Wild West yarns. “Chaps shares many of my concerns about the federal government's secret projects.”

I braced myself, expecting a harangue on black helicopters.

Fortunately, it didn't happen. Tinsley raised her nose again, as if smelling something unpleasant. “But Chaps said he didn't care about…to quote him exactly, ‘that kind of bullshit.' He said he was attending SOBOP merely to find a publisher for his poetry, and he even had the gall to ask me if I'd introduce him to a few.”

“Did you?”

“Chaps being a member of my constituency, yes, I did.”

“And?”

Tinsley's mouth stretched as far as the Botox would allow. I think it was supposed to be a smile. “I talked to Gloriana first, but she just laughed at me. Called his work ‘third-rate doggerel,' even worse than the poetry of Robert Service, who—before she heard Chaps—she'd believed was the worst poet in American history.”