Desert Wind (18 page)

Following her eyes, I saw Nancy Donohue dressed in a rhinestone cowgirl outfit. She was whooping it up by the drinks table with the rest of the Book Bitches. Momentarily giving up on the Tosches, I moved toward them.

The closeness of the crowded room had given me a headache, and even though someone had opened the sliding doors leading to the patio, I could still smell the sweat emanating from the dance floor. Smoking in public places was illegal in Arizona, but I smelled cigarette smoke. Die-hards on the patio were sneaking a few. And for God’s sake, was that a note of marijuana sweetening the more acrid stench of tobacco? I remembered, then, that although these folks looked old to me, many were young enough to be members of the Woodstock generation. If the sheriff ever raided Sunset Canyon Lakes, they would be dragged into the cop cars, trailing their bongs behind them.

“Well, if it isn’t the big city detective!” Nancy Donohue bayed, interrupting my train of thought. “Catch my husband’s killer yet?”

“Not yet.” I reminded myself that despite their resemblance, Nancy wasn’t the foster mother who’d so neglected my frail emotional state. Carrying that old ghost around could cloud my investigative judgment, so I pushed Mrs. Putney back into the bitter past where she belonged, and smiled.

“Are you still convinced Ted Olmstead didn’t do it?” she asked.

“Absolutely.” Although that may have been an exaggeration.

“Where’s your proof?”

“You can’t prove a negative. How well did you know Ted?”

“I’ve ridden with him many times. On a horse, not a bed,” she smirked and cast a glance in Mia Tosches’ direction.

Knowing her well, the other women in the book group—all of them in saloon girl garb—didn’t bother to look shocked. Neither did I. “The last time we talked, you named Rog…”

She put up her hand. “No names. We’re in public. Lawsuits, you know.”

It was hard to keep from laughing at this sudden display of discretion, but I managed. “Nancy, when we spoke earlier today, you said it wasn’t unusual for your husband to stay out late, sometimes even all night. Had your husband’s behavior changed in any other way in the last few days before he was killed?”

At first I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but after taking a hefty swig of whatever she was drinking, she answered, “Funny you should ask. Starting a couple of months ago, it was like living with a different person. I put it down to the fact that he’d stopped smoking, which always makes people edgy, and I even asked Elizabeth
here about it. When her husband stopped, she almost had to have him carted off to the giggle factory, but Ike wasn’t acting anything like Jim.”

“Jim was a mess,” Elizabeth piped up. Her purple saloon girl dress perfectly matched her hair. “He kept pacing back and forth, yelling all the time at every little thing, really unpleasant. I finally told him that if he was going to continue acting like that, I’d rather he went back to smoking. He…”

Mrs. Donohue shot her a look. “We’re talking about
my
husband, not that lout you live with.” Then, to me, “As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted, Ike’s behavior changed. He wasn’t acting as nuts as Jim did, only distracted, like he had something on his mind.”

“Any idea what it might have been?”

She shrugged her rhinestoned shoulders. “Haven’t the foggiest. But here’s something for you. The other day I opened his cell phone bill and saw a slew of long-distance charges, some to phone numbers in Durham, North Carolina, where we used to live. When I asked him about it, he told me it was none of my business, something he’d never said to me before. We had one hell of an argument over it, too, but he still wouldn’t explain, walked right out the door leaving me standing there with my mouth open. Well! You can imagine that I wasn’t about to let something like that hang, so I called one of the numbers, and guess what?”

“I’m all ears.” So was my digital recorder.

“His ex-wife Claudia answered the phone!”

Behind her, one of the Book Bitches tittered.

Mrs. Donohue ignored her. “Now why would he call that woman? I mean, it wasn’t like he was thinking about going back to her, because she’d long since remarried some oaf who used to work for the same company he’d worked for, which I happen to think is pretty suspicious in itself, for the obvious reason.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Do I have to paint you a picture? Ike’s children always hated me because they thought I’d taken him away from their mother, but seeing as how Claudia remarried right away—and to somebody she must have already known, no less—there must have been some hanky-panky going on, and not only on Ike’s side. So why the hell would he call that cheating whore?”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. “Did you ask her?”

“Oh, I asked her plenty, that’s for sure, and she told me it was none of my business and hung up before I could give her a piece of my mind. When I went after Ike again, he told me the same thing!” She took another swig of her drink, then continued. “Look, Jones, if that really
is
your name, Ike knew better than to keep secrets from me because he knew I’d find out everything anyway and God help him then. Him staying out all night, that didn’t surprise me because all men are sluts, aren’t they? But those strange phone calls, yeah, that was new. The fact that he didn’t want to discuss any of it with me, well, you asked about behavior changes, that was
big time
new. Oh, and some of those other calls? They were to his kids, but I can’t imagine why. At my suggestion, he’d written those losers out of his life years ago.”

Not only had she broken up her husband’s first marriage, she’d alienated him from his children, too. But I was a detective, not a priest, so I didn’t tell her to recite a thousand Hail Marys and change her heartless ways. “Did you track down the other calls?”

“Of course I did, what do you take me for? Some were to people he knew when he was married to Claudia, like that troll Gerald Heber. I wound up talking to the granddaughter because old Heber’d been dead for years.”

“Did she say why he’d called?”

“Once he found out Heber was dead, he didn’t say why. But one funny thing. Before he hung up, he asked her if she smoked. When she said she did, he told her to stop immediately. Coming from him, that’s quite the advice, eh? I had better luck with the Arizona area codes—more people were still alive!” She cackled like a mad thing.

I pushed the memories of Mrs. Putney back down. “Did anyone tell you why he was calling?”

“Most wouldn’t talk to me, just hung up, people are so rude these days. But one woman, our former cleaning lady, of all people, said he’d called to apologize for docking her pay $139.49 when she broke a serving platter. She said he told her he was sending out a check to make amends.”

“Make amends,” a phrase used by people involved in Twelve Step programs. One of the steps, I’d never been clear on which one, involved making amends to the people you’d hurt in your drinking or drugging days.

“Did Ike drink?” I asked.

“No more than anyone else. Less than most, actually. Being in public relations, he needed to keep his wits about him.”

“Did he use drugs?”

A scowl vicious enough to scare Dracula. “You fool. This conversation is over.” She turned her sequined back to me.

As I walked away, my head was buzzing. What was the meaning behind those phone calls? If Nancy Donohue was to be believed, her husband hadn’t been an addict of any kind, unless you counted his addiction to nicotine. But maybe the merry widow didn’t know as much about her husband’s problems as she thought she did. Some alcoholics managed to hide their drinking for years before getting caught. The fact that Ike had been going out at night, sometimes not returning until morning, was odd in and of itself. Nancy obviously suspected an affair, but he could have been visiting a Walapai Flats crack house. At his age such a possibility was unlikely, but neither age nor social status proved barriers to addiction. Just ask those pot smokers out on the patio.

Then I remembered that Las Vegas, Sin City itself, was less than three hours away. The condition of Nancy Donohue’s living room, the scuffed and threadbare furniture, could have been put down to Vegas-lost money, not poor housekeeping. Perhaps Donohue had developed a gambling problem, and spent those late nights at the casinos. But if so, wouldn’t Nancy have noticed a sudden shortage of funds?

Neither Jimmy nor myself had yet seen a copy of Donohue’s autopsy. If he had been currently addicted to any sort of drug, it would eventually show up on the tox screen, but that report wouldn’t come in for weeks. Even if he’d recently kicked his habit, the damage—such as old track marks—might still be present. A history of alcohol abuse, of course, could be determined by a fatty liver. I made a mental note to obtain a copy of the autopsy from Anderson Behar, Ted’s attorney, first thing in the morning. Thinking of that attorney, I experienced a flash of irritation. If anything had been out of line on that autopsy, Behar should have already disclosed it to Desert Investigations. Then again, he was a real estate attorney who had never tried a murder case in his life. What had Hank Olmstead been thinking, hiring him? But I couldn’t let myself off the hook about the autopsy, either, when all I’d been concerned with was the murder weapon. Why hadn’t I thought about…

“Get any good quotes on that recorder in your tote bag?”

Olivia Eames’ voice startled me out of my funk. Of course a reporter would notice what I’d been doing.

I gave her a rueful smile. “I’m not sure.”

She smiled back. “Take anything Nancy says with a grain of salt. She’s not nearly as heartless as she’d like people to believe.”

“And Satan runs a rescue mission for homeless vets.”

Olivia laughed, revealing two small sores on the inside of her bottom lip. Given her gauntness and pale complexion, I transferred my suspicions about senior druggies to her. Crystal meth? Or merely a visit from herpes simplex, the virus that causes cold sores?

Unaware of the way my mind tracked, she asked, “How’s the investigation going? From what I’ve been able to ascertain, Ted Olmstead’s still being held.”

“Unfortunately, that’s true, but I’m following up on some promising leads.” My second lie of the day. “Did you know Ted?”

“Never met the man. If he’s innocent, the truth will come out. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough.”

“That sounds awfully trusting coming from a journalist.”

She shrugged her bony shoulders. “The American justice system isn’t entirely corrupt.”

“Just partially?”

That raspy laugh again. “You’ve got me there. Seriously, though, the guy has a good lawyer, doesn’t he?”

“Ted? He should be so lucky. His father hired a real estate attorney.”

Her black-rimmed eyes widened. “For a
homicide
case?”

“I’m afraid so.”

She didn’t say anything else for a moment, only smiled faintly at the group of cowboys and saloon girls forming themselves into a line to dance to the twang and thump of “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” After one chaps-wearing man stomped on his partner’s boot-clad foot and she stormed off the dance floor, Olivia finally spoke again.

“Enjoying the mixer?”

The abrupt change of subject threw me. “I’m not a fan of theme parties. They kill every bit of spontaneity the human animal has left in its over-regimented soul. Nice outfit you’re wearing, though.”

“Like you, I’m partial to black.” She fell silent again, watching the dancers. As soon as the music clomped to a halt, the fiddle-player told them to form up for “Turkey In the Straw.” Obediently, they gave it a try, and after a few missteps and collisions, managed a passable square dance.

“They’re sure having a good time,” Olivia said.

Her wistful tone made me ask, “Aren’t you?”

“Too much work to do.”

I decided not to mention seeing her at the demonstration earlier. “I take it you’re not here on vacation.”

“Can’t put anything over on a detective, can I? If I were vacationing, it certainly wouldn’t be here. It would be someplace less crowded, like the Arctic Circle. I’m here to cover the reopening of the Black Basin Mine.”

“Why does the
New York Times
care about an Arizona uranium mine?”

“‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee,’ John Donne wrote,” she said. “That’s something the EPA, OSHA, and the U.S. House and Senate should take more seriously. Pollution, especially the radioactive kind, has a nasty way of not staying put. It blows where the wind blows, and in this part of the country, that means from the west to the east. Particulates in Arizona air become particulates in Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and even New York. Ergo, the environmental bell tolls for us all. Besides, even New Yorkers admire the Grand Canyon.”

Well, she was the journalist, not me. “But I was under the impression that uranium mines themselves aren’t radioactive enough to bother anyone. Isn’t the real problem the runoff from the mine tailings? I hear it contains arsenic, radon, and other crap, which is why environmental folks are raising so much hell.”

Her face shut down. “You’re only partially correct. Arsenic does show up in the mine tailings, which pollutes anyone or anything living downstream. But while raw uranium may not be all that dangerous in and of itself, the first step of processing, which is done right at the mine, intensifies the radioactivity by turning the ore into something called yellow cake. When the workers breathe the yellow cake dust, their lungs rot. Those Navajos that worked on the Moccasin Peak Mine have a lung cancer rate that’s five times higher than the Navajos that didn’t work there. Their bones and kidneys aren’t doing so well, either.”