Desert Wind (40 page)

He smiled fondly at her. “Babs was the line-drawer and she made sure the kids toed it. Me, I tend to let things go.”

This couple was too good to be true. Or maybe not. Even in this cynical old world, miracles sometimes happened.

But usually not on my watch.

“Mrs. Laveen, do you have any theories about the person who killed Roger Tosches? Or Ike Donohue, for that matter.”

She shook her frowsy gray head. “Don’t know, don’t care. If there’s an Afterlife, the both of them are in big trouble.”

***

When the trolley dropped me off in front of the leasing office, Katherine had returned. She was sitting behind her chrome and glass desk, drinking 7-Up straight from the can, oddly inelegant behavior for such an elegant woman.

“How’d the sales pitch go?” I asked.

“They weren’t in a buying mood.” She took a final chug of 7-Up, then tossed the empty can toward the waste basket. She missed, and the can rolled across the floor until it came to rest in the corner. She didn’t bother picking it up. “Knowing you, you’ve already heard about Trent.”

“From Mia Tosches. Is it true?”

“True that the police took him in for questioning, true that he embezzled money from the entertainment account, or true that he murdered Roger Tosches?”

“Whichever.”

“He’s my husband,” she said, as if that was answer enough.

“Which means you’re sticking by him regardless.”

“You love who you love.”

I thought about Dusty. About Warren. About the mother and father I only vaguely remembered but yearned for every day. Then I thought about Mia, and the way her brittleness had softened when she spoke Kimama Olmstead’s name. Katherine was right: you love who you love. “True as that may be, Katherine, why would Trent embezzle money? Surely with your combined salaries and free housing, you were making enough to get by.”

The silence, which I’d taken as a mere pause before answering, stretched so long that I filled it with another question. “Enough money to get by, that is, unless Trent picked up a drug habit while serving time, a common enough occurrence. Did that happen?”

Her continued silence provided my answer.

***

Due to the detour around Deputy Stark’s murder scene, traffic along Route 47 moved slowly. I didn’t mind, because it gave me time to think. When the traffic arced around one of the smaller mesas, I pulled away and bumped the Trailblazer to the side, where the view—unhindered by a mile-long line of vehicles—was breathtaking.

Stepping out of the car into the still-cool morning air, I could see an azure sky so pure it almost hurt. Fawn-colored desert. Soft green cacti. Red, orange, and purple mesas clawing toward the heavens.

The “nothing” the Atomic Energy Commission had seen fit to despoil.

Grateful that I was always equipped with running shoes and a canteen—and that Deputy Stark was no longer around to shoot at me—I began to jog. The very physicality of running clears the mind, and as I headed toward a mitten-shaped mesa, I reviewed everything I’d learned. The fact that people lie isn’t always a drawback. Lies often point toward a greater truth.

Ike Donohue lied for a living, and in their own way, so did Roger Tosches and Ronnie Stark. Donohue lied for a paycheck, Tosches lied to open the Black Basin Mine, Stark lied about his brutality in order to keep his job. Money wasn’t the only reason people lied. Out of shame, Ted Olmstead lied about his relationship with Mia. Stark’s damaged wife lied from misguided loyalty. Nancy Donohue lied about her true feelings for her husband. Gabe Boone lied to spring Ted from jail.

Silence could be a lie, too. In order to keep tourist dollars rolling in, every member of the Walapai Chamber of Commerce remained silent about the area’s history of radioactive contamination. Mia Tosches, no fool, hadn’t revealed her feelings for Kimama Olmstead to her husband. Trent Dysart’s résumé didn’t list theft, manslaughter, prison, or drug addiction. Hank Olmstead wasn’t foolish enough to admit that he loved his children enough to kill for them.

Sunset Canyon Lakes was the biggest lie of all. A so-called “oasis” in the middle of the desert, it catered to the middle-aged and elderly, yet all the resort’s employees were young and good-looking, from the pool boys to the trolley drivers and golf cart chauffeurs. I wondered how much they made on “tips.”

By the time I jogged into the long shadow of the mesa, I understood what had been happening in Walapai Flats, and why. I only needed to check in with Jimmy before I took my findings to the authorities.

***

Since I’d called ahead, Jimmy was fully dressed by the time I made it to the Desert View, thus sparing me my blushes. Once we were seated at the card table, he proceeded with his show-and-tell, our earlier dust-up at the park apparently forgotten.

“Let’s start with Sheriff Wiley Alcott.” He tapped a few keys and a legal document popped up.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The will of Wiley George Alcott I, filed in Walapai County Circuit Court, August 24, 1995, leaving all his worldly goods to grandson Wiley George Alcott III, which included a six-hundred-fifty acre tract the centerpiece of which was the Two Devils Silver Mine in Silver Ridge, plus a twenty-five room house; no, make that a mansion. The sheriff’s rolling in it.”

Piles of money might explain the sheriff’s Rolex and Armani, but it raised a different question. “Why didn’t Grandpa Alcott leave his fortune to his son, the sheriff’s father?”

“Couldn’t. Wiley George Alcott II died of thyroid cancer in 1981, the same disease that eventually killed Grandpa Alcott, and Grandpa’s sister Alice. The radiation from the Nevada Test Site wiped out the sheriff’s entire family.”

Which might explain something else. “Alcott’s been pretty friendly, considering the fact that I was encroaching on his turf.”

“He was hoping you’d dig up dirt in areas where his own hands were tied. People tend to forget that sheriffs are elected officials. Politicians, as it were, and as I’m sure you realize, most politicians don’t want to irritate the electorate. Looks to me like Alcott has big plans, possibly some day running for state attorney general. And before you ask, yes, he has a law degree.”

It was all coming together. “Does he still own the Two Devils?”

“Sure does. The silver’s pretty much gone, but he’s leased out the acreage for rangeland. He’s made very good investments, too, enough to send his oldest daughter to study art at the Sorbonne. That’s in…”

“Paris,” I interrupted. “
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

“A la-di-da way of saying times change, but not really.” He tapped a few more keys. “Moving on. Regarding Gerald Heber, one-time liar for the Atomic Energy Commission, I came up with something intriguing. Take a look at this old police report.”

On May 30, 1960, Heber accused Gabriel Boone of assault during a community meeting in Silver Ridge designed to dispel fears about the dangers of continued nuclear fallout. Heber had been assuring the residents of Walapai County that the spike in cancer cases was in no way connected to the nearby testing when Boone, who’d been in the audience, shouted, “Liar! You government people killed Edna and now you’re killing Abby!” When Heber scoffed at the accusation, Boone leapt from his chair and knocked him to the ground. Boone was taken into custody, but released the next day on his own recognizance. Heber was treated for minor injuries at the Walapai County Hospital.

“Wow,” was all I could say.

“Ditto on the wow, and check out this next item.”

Another screen popped up, its format similar to the last, but this time it was a report from the Clark County, Nevada, sheriff’s office. On November 21, 1979, hikers in the desert a few miles outside Las Vegas found the body of an elderly white male. He’d been shot in the head at close range. When deputies arrived on the scene, they identified the man as Gerald Heber. His wallet contained approximately three hundred dollars in twenties and fifties, and a full deck of credit cards. That wasn’t all. Detectives found four hundred dollars in chips from the Desert Inn Casino in another pocket, so robbery was not considered a motive.

I took a deep breath. “When did Boone’s wife die?”

“November 12, 1979.”

Nine days after her death, Heber was murdered. “Was the killer ever caught?”

“The case remains open.”

Maybe Gabe Boone wasn’t the innocent I’d believed he was. Therapists tell us that the first stage of grief is denial, and the second stage is anger. Just how deep had his anger run?

“Boone couldn’t have known Heber was in Las Vegas,” I said, with relief.

Without saying a word, Jimmy brought up another screen to reveal a small article that had appeared in the November 19, 1979, edition of the
Las Vegas Sun
. It announced the winners of the Senior Division of the Ezra Stroughmeyer Cerebral Palsy Charity Golf Tournament on Sunday, November 18. The caption on the photo accompanying the article read, “Pictured is Gerald Heber, 79, receiving the first place prize, a gold-plated golf ball. Heber, who is staying at the Desert Inn through the end of the week, said, “This old man beat out kids as young as 66! I’ve still got it, world!”

Given Walapai Flats’ proximity to Vegas, it was possible that Gabe Boone had somehow seen the article. While I’d taken my stroll along John Wayne Boulevard, I’d seen two news racks selling the
Sun
—one right in front of Ma’s Kitchen. For a moment I was tempted to go over to the jail and grill Gabe. Then I remembered the suffering aided and abetted by Heber’s lies and decided that whatever the truth was, I really didn’t want to know.

“Ready to see what else I found out about Mia Tosches?” Jimmy asked, interrupting my dark thoughts.

“Don’t tell me Mia murdered someone, too.”

“If she did, no one’s found the body. But our little wild child’s full of surprises. County records list her as the founder and chief financial supporter of Haven, the local safe house for battered women. Not only that, but she’s also a major contributor to an emergency shelter for abused children. What do you think of that?”

“I think somewhere down in Phoenix there’s a psychiatrist who needs to brush up on his diagnostic skills.”

Jimmy looked puzzled, but I didn’t bother to enlighten him. “What about Tosches himself? Did you find anything else on him?”

“Only that he was in talks to buy out Laveen’s share in the Black Basin.”

“I have it on good authority that he got turned down.” That is, if the Laveens had told me the truth.

The rest of Jimmy’s research, deeper than anything I’d been able to carry out, revealed more surprises, many of them monetary. Earl Two Horses didn’t own the Walapai Gas-N-Go; his Paiute mother did. She’d bought the gas station with the settlement she received after the cancer deaths at the Moccasin Peak Mine became public; her Navajo husband’s name appeared on the list of the mine’s victims.

Before relocating with Katherine to Sunset Canyon Lakes, Trent Dysart had been fired from a Boston area video store when the till kept coming up short after his late-night shift. Farrier Monty Carson had been in several barroom fights, once having had to fork over six thousand dollars in damages to the Dew Drop Inn, from which he was permanently barred. Pretty little Tara Sabbatini, Jimmy’s favorite waitress, had been arrested three years earlier for shoplifting a purple thong at the Silver Ridge Wal-Mart, but she hadn’t re-offended since she’d begun waitressing for her father Marcello—better known as “Ma.” Ma had his own criminal history. He’d once served three days in the Walapai Flats lockup after pushing a diner’s head into a plate of spaghetti marinara after the diner complained his pasta wasn’t
al dente
enough.

The most intriguing information was the dirt Jimmy dug up on Ronald Stark. At the time of his death, the deputy—who pulled down a whopping thirty-four thousand dollars per annum—had been under investigation by the Walapai County Sheriff’s Office for expenditure-versus-income irregularities. The investigation began when Sheriff Alcott discovered that Deputy Smiley Face owned four Mohave County rental properties; a 2011 Bayliner 195 Discovery power boat he’d bought outright three days after Kimama Olmstead’s murder, and which he kept docked at Lake Mead; a brand new Harley-Davidson Ultra, also bought outright; and a 1964 Corvette Pro Street he garaged at the rental home he leased to Georgette Hansen, a pole dancer at the Lake Mead Triple X Gentleman’s Club. The lease for the three-bedroom-four-bath-plus pool home was for one hundred a month; I guessed the rest was made up in services rendered.

Stark had been on the take from Roger Tosches for years. The fact that the two men had been shot to death within one day of each other was intriguing, and I was willing to bet the same handgun had killed both. Coincidences may exist, but no good investigator believes in them.

“I don’t see anything about Cole and Barbara Laveen here,” I said, after scrolling through the various rap sheets of felonies and misdemeanors accumulated by the good folk of Walapai Flats.

“That’s because I found no dirt on them, unless you want to count the ticket Laveen was issued last September when he got caught parking crossways in a strip mall driveway while rescuing a stray dog hit by a car. He paid the fine, apologized, and went on his merry way.”