Kissing Arizona (14 page)

Vicky gave him a level, measuring look. ‘What do you want,
Señor?
'

‘Now ain't that funny? I's just gonna ask you that same thing, what do you want? Cause if you had enough of that fine water and coffee they handin' out inside there, maybe you'd like to come along with me and my friends and get some, you know,
treats
?' He pointed across the street at a long green convertible with tail fins and fancy rims. Vicky knew very little about cars but thought it looked like something Chaco would call a pimpmobile. Two young women in big sunglasses smiled and waved from the back seat. Vicky thought their faces looked Mexican, but their big hairdos were platinum blond.

‘My cousins, they fun-loving girls,' the man said.

‘I see that,' Vicky said.

‘So you want to hop in, go for a spin?'

‘No, gracias.' She turned away.
Do I look like I was born yesterday?

‘And then a little later today,' he said behind her back, ‘I'll give you a ride to Tucson. Isn't that where you want to go?'

Vicky turned back and regarded him seriously. He smiled. She said, ‘Alas, I have no passport.'

‘Oh, girl, you mustn't let people vex you about old pieces of paper. Why, Stella over there –' he indicated one of the girls – ‘she probably got one she can lend you till we get through the gate.'

‘Then what would Stella use?'

‘Be a lot easier to show you how all this works,' the handsome young man said, ‘if you just go ahead and get in the
car.
'

Vicky said, ‘Give me a minute,' and ran inside the patio to tell Jaime. ‘I have been invited to ride to Tucson with that man out there, see him? And I am going to go.' She hugged him for a short, fierce moment, suddenly fonder of him than ever before.

He held onto her, saying, ‘Are you sure? I do not like that man's face.'

‘I agree, I think he is evil. But he will take me to Arizona so I can kiss the ground.'

Jaime looked downcast. ‘I am so sorry I failed you in that.'

‘Hey, you got me halfway!' They were suddenly buddies. All the small angers of their anxious crossing were forgotten and they loved each other.

‘I hate to see you go alone,' Jaime said anxiously, ‘what will you do when you get there?'

‘Don't worry. I will go to Tía Luisa's house, where my sister is. I remember exactly where it is,' she lied. ‘I will be fine.'

‘I want to give you something,' Jaime said. He fished out the silly cigarette lighter with the bobble head and pressed it into her hand.

‘What's that for?'

‘To remember me by,' he said, and added with an ironic shrug, ‘and you never know when you might need to light a fire.' He kissed her. ‘Here, take my sharp nail, too, I won't need it in Ajijic.' He did a little carefree dance, as if he was already home.

Vicky laughed. ‘You so crazy. Good luck on your trip back.' Over Jaime's shoulder as she hugged him one last time, she saw Dee pointing behind her own hand at the handsome stranger and shaking her head. In back of Jaime's shoulder, Vicky made a quick circle with her thumb and forefinger. She smiled at Dee, kissed Jaime's warm cheek again and ran across the street to the open car.

The black man said, ‘OK, let's get acquainted.' He gave her his card. His name was printed on it: Freddy O., with a Tucson phone number and the message ‘For fun and games.'

‘And these are my faithful travelling companions,' he said, ‘Bernice and Stella.' Up close, she could see they were definitely wearing wigs. Vicky told them her name and gave them all a small, discreet smile. Freddy O. said, to the two blonds in the back, ‘Our new friend still kind of shy of us, so let's be nice to her now, make her feel at home.'

Vicky never felt at home in the green convertible, but when Freddy O. told her it was a fully restored 1962 Lincoln Continental, she said it was pretty and he looked pleased. They spun around Agua Prieta finding one treat after another – she gobbled up fish tacos at one roadside stand, rice and beans at another, an ice-cream bar at a third. Her hunger, which had been stifled by fear and fatigue, was awakened by the first taste of food, and after that for an hour she ate everything they offered her. They smiled good-naturedly, like fond cousins, when Vicky exclaimed how good it all tasted.

After several treats Vicky asked if they could go to a place that had a ladies' room. Freddy said, ‘Of course, why didn't I think of that?' He asked Bernice and Stella where they wanted to go and went where they suggested, to a hotel that looked old but had nice tile floors and a fountain with several tables around it. The ladies' room was very small so although Bernice came with her to the door they could only go in one at a time, and when she came out and Bernice went in Stella was right there to lead her back to the table, ‘So you don't get lost in this great big place,' she said, laughing.

When they came back to the table Vicky took a sip of her water and thought it tasted a little odd, so she told the waiter she had seen a fly in it and asked for a fresh glass. Freddy smiled as he watched her drink. He said, ‘You careful, huh? Smart girl.' Vicky smiled at him sweetly and said nothing.

Back out on the street Freddy said, ‘OK, time for some serious fun now,' and Stella said, ‘All
right
!' Freddy drove a few blocks, parked, and reached a hand across the back seat to Stella, saying, ‘Here we go.' She put a zippered black bag, short but fat, into his hand and he got out and bopped into a bar where, he said, the girls didn't want to go. When he came back out he handed the bag, flat now, back to Stella, reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a roach. He said, ‘Ta da!
La mejor hierba mala en todo el mundo!
'

Stella said, ‘Oh, you clever man,' with a warm chuckle. She lit up and passed it to Bernice. The three of them, making small noises of contentment, began passing it around. When it came to her, Vicky just passed it along.

‘C'mon, we might as well smoke this weed right up,' Bernice said, ‘can't take this stuff across the border, right?'

‘Oh, no, indeedy,' Freddy O. said. ‘Don't need that kind of trouble.' For some reason, this remark made them all chuckle happily.

Vicky kept smiling and passing the smoke. Hemp was as available as toothpaste on the street where she grew up, so she was not surprised to see that smoking it right up made the threesome even jollier than before. They rolled along the crowded streets of Agua Prieta in the open car, enjoying treats and telling jokes until the two blond girls were holding their sides.

Besides not being naturally blond, now that she'd listened to them for a while Vicky thought Bernice and Stella didn't seem Mexican, either. Their accents were hip American with inflections that made her think of the TV show,
Queer Eye For the Straight Guy
. Stella was a little darker than Vicky but looked as if she might have a grandmother with Aztec cheekbones. Bernice had lighter skin but her features looked more like Freddy's – maybe she really was Freddy's cousin.

Vicky wanted to keep watching all the members of this group until she figured out what they had in mind for her, so she sat sideways on the front seat, looking from one to another and wearing a clueless expression like a brain-dead rabbit. She did not laugh at any of their jokes even when – especially when – she could tell what was supposed to be funny.

She had her own joke to enjoy, which was that if this arrangement worked as well as Freddy O. seemed to think it would, she would make her third entry into Arizona riding in plain sight in a fully restored Lincoln Continental convertible.

SEVEN

D
elaney walked off the elevator on the second floor with Leo Tobin, just as Sarah reached the top of the stairs.

‘Ah, here comes the Iron Woman, climbing again,' Leo said. ‘You heard about Burke's Law for elevators, boss?'

‘No, what is it?' Delaney hated puzzles.

‘Do Not Enter. Burke has decided elevators are evil.'

‘I don't have time to go to the gym any more,' Sarah said, ‘so I climb stairs to fight the flab. What's wrong with that?'

‘Not a thing' Leo said. ‘Why don't you get rid of your washing machine too? Take your clothes down to the river and beat them on a rock, that's good exercise.'

Sarah said, ‘What river?' A couple of winter rains had sent a trickle down the middle of the Santa Cruz channel, but it had disappeared in a day.

Delaney made shushing motions at both of them. ‘Come on, let's get to work.' He waved his arm at the rest of the crew in their workspaces. ‘Guys, bring your notes. I set up a table back here by the . . . oh, now, who put these sketches all over it?'

‘They're mine, from the Cooper crime scene,' Jason said, walking over. ‘They're not in any particular order yet, just pile 'em up.'

They all brought their own chairs, plus one extra Delaney said they were going to need. Another five minutes passed while they trotted around, fetching coffee and water and notes. Delaney sat watching them with a muscle twitching in his jaw.

‘What's this in the paper about bones?' Oscar Cifuentes asked, sitting down. ‘My date last night got all excited about something besides sex for once.'

Jason said, ‘Poor, poor Oscar, his ladies won't leave him alone.' All the other detectives made barfing noises.

‘This one sure did,' Oscar said. ‘She wanted to hear all the details, and when I told her I didn't know anything about it she told me I was a poor excuse for a cop. Why aren't we all briefed on the hottest thing in the news?'

‘Sarah is,' Ollie Greenaway said. ‘The paper quoted her twice. How come Sarah has all the fun?'

‘Give me a break,' Sarah said, and added, for the tenth time that day, ‘I just happened to take the call.' She was doing her best to downplay her involvement with the bones, because the bones irritated Delaney. He hated flamboyant headlines about cases that didn't conform to standard police work. Next we'll be seeing overheated letters to the editor, he'd said, asking what this town's coming to. She hadn't told him yet that she'd responded to Cokely on her own and uncovered a new, hot lead on the bones.

‘What have you got on it so far?' Delaney asked her.

‘It's not a critter, it's a human being. Or parts of one,' she said. She wanted to be alone with Delaney when she told him about Inman's proposition. ‘We're getting lots of tips about possible identity, of course.' Phone messages were piling up on her desk, her email in-box was full.

‘I bet.' Delaney winced.

‘I got dibs on the next vampire case,' Ollie said.

‘I get the alien abduction then,' Jason said, patting the top of his head.

‘OK, enough!' Delaney slapped a file down and opened it. ‘Come on, guys, the Cooper case!' They all put their cups down, opened files, sat forward. ‘I've read the autopsy report twice and there are several things that don't make sense to me.'

‘Tell me about it,' Leo said. ‘Lot of medical jargon in there. If you ask me it's just The Animal covering his ass.'

‘Or maybe he's just stating the truth,' Delaney said, ‘which we don't have the training to understand. You were there Monday afternoon, what did you think at the time? Did you find the data confusing?'

‘Well, yeah,' Leo said. ‘But then I always do. All those Latin words! I expect them to sort it out for the report and give us a
conclusion.
' He flapped a hand over his own notes. ‘Hell, what he sent over this time, I'd be just as well off sticking with my own notes.'

‘Well, that's not the way we do it here. So I called Dr Greenberg and asked if he could possibly spare time to come over and explain some things today.' Delaney gave Leo a cool stare and added, ‘I asked him very politely and he said he didn't have time but after he thought about it he said he'd do it anyway. So now just stifle those Animal cracks, please, Leo, because this is a big favor the man is doing us, and I want to see him treated with every courtesy here.' He looked around the table while Leo Tobin, the wise old man of the section, shuffled papers and swallowed his anger.

‘Sarah,' Delaney said, ‘your interviews with the two employees seemed straightforward enough, but the Cooper son and daughter . . . not much there.'

‘I know, and I had to really dig to get that. They were both closed up like clams. Of course it was the first day, they were in shock. Even so . . . I think I should talk to them again.'

‘I agree. As soon as possible, please. And the sister, you haven't talked to her yet, have you?'

‘Lois Cooper's sister? She's been very hard to catch, she's never home and she doesn't have an answering device on her phone. I finally asked Nicole for help, and wow, is that the right answer, guys. In ten minutes Lois's sister Fran called me, and I'm seeing her tomorrow morning.'

‘Good. Now, Jason? I know you looked all day for the bullets that killed the Coopers, but you finally found them both, right?'

‘Mrs Cooper's wasn't so tough, once they got the body out of there and I got permission from all the other criminalists to get in there and dig out the hole in the molding where I was sure it was. Frank's was under the last scraping of bloody tissue off that stupid flocked wallpaper,' Jason said. ‘Time I found it I was getting to know every fragment of his cranium by name. The crime scene techs wouldn't let me touch anything till they took its photograph fifty times like it was running for president or something. Jeez, what a day.'

‘OK, but once you did find the hole, did you have any trouble getting the slug out of the wall?'