New River Blues (19 page)

‘Still ain't gonna make it.'

‘Try.'

He was right, sort of. The desk had to move a little more before the table came all the way in. But by the time Elmer had gimped away rubbing his back, Sarah had begun to transfer all the Henderson reports to the extra table. She found Ollie's witness report, uttered a triumphant cry and slid it behind her own in the folder.

I need a cup of coffee to help me finish this job.
She walked out to the break room, poured a fresh cup, and came back savoring the good smell. Tracy Scott was peering in the door of her cubicle.

‘Is that a clean desk?' he asked, when she walked up to him. ‘Zounds, I got here just in time! You mustn't let yourself get caught like that, Sarah. Sergeant Scrooge will pile more work on you.'

‘He'll do that anyway.' She sighed, eyeing his armful of printouts. ‘But you're going to beat him to it, aren't you?'

‘This isn't work. This is truth. Take heart, Lady Crime-Fighter!' He did some tricky imaginary-cape moves. ‘Genius Geek has come to lighten your load!'

He plopped the pile of paper in the middle of her desk and began to spread it out sequentially. He used every inch of space, moving her lamp and phone to the floor to make room. When he'd covered her desk he moved to the top of the file cabinet, displacing a potted plant and a row of books. The last two printouts still wouldn't fit there, so he hung them over the front edges of file drawers.

‘For God's sake don't sneeze,' he said, as he moved back to the starting point.

‘Or laugh,' Sarah said, and then, like a child in church, was overcome by perverse hilarity. Tracy Scott watched in astonished horror as she quaked helplessly with a hand over her mouth.

‘Don't,' he begged her, and looked right into her eyes, shaking his head, until she returned to sobriety, gave herself a little shake and said, ‘OK, let's go!' They sidled together, intimate as dancers, along the gently fluttering pages of his research.

‘Here's the drive to Phoenix, Friday afternoon. Arrived at the Airport Radisson at six thirty p.m., see? Long dry spell here, that night and Saturday, when the car never moved – I telescoped that. But now, here, at eight thirty Saturday night, he's off across town to this address on North Fourth Street.'

‘Who lives there?'

‘An escort service named Frisky Ladies.'

‘Oh, for God's sake.'

‘Why are you surprised? Isn't that what husbands do when they go to conventions?'

‘I guess. Somehow I thought he had more class.'

‘So few of us do,' Tracy Scott observed from the lofty vantage point of his nineteen years. ‘Looks like he enjoyed himself, he stayed till after eleven.'

‘Why would he stay there? An escort service is not a whorehouse.'

‘You'll have to ask him that. He went straight back to the hotel from there. And stayed there till,' he pointed, ‘right here, see? The car moved again at ten o'clock Sunday morning.

‘Then for four hours he, or at least his car, drove all over this patch of, as far as I can see, empty desert. This whole segment across the middle of the desk here, he's on country roads south and west of Casa Grande.'

‘Just as he said,' Sarah murmured, wondering about the mosaic of truth and falsehood in Roger Henderson's report of his weekend.
Although to be fair he didn't say he never
left the hotel Saturday night.

‘Here's where it gets interesting. By four o'clock he was back on North Fourth Street—'

‘What?'

‘Back with the Frisky Ladies. Yup.'

‘He went back to the escort service when he was expected at his daughter's birthday party?'

‘Men are just no damn good, are they?' He scrutinized her face. ‘Why aren't you pleased? Your chief suspect is behaving despicably.'

‘It just doesn't fit with the image I have of him. He seems aggressive and hard, but not frivolous. But OK, work with what you've got – what next? How long before he finally did go home? No, wait a minute . . . I was there when he got home. Just after lunch on Monday. He must have found himself an unusually frisky lady.'

‘Is this a monologue or can anybody join in?'

‘Sorry, Tracy. It's just . . . go ahead, what else have you got?'

‘Well, according to our faithful eyes in the sky, Henderson's car stayed on North Fourth Street till past midnight Sunday night.'

‘But then he went back to the hotel?'

‘Yes. At twenty-one minutes to one a.m. – see this right here? – he cranked 'er up and drove back to the Airport Radisson. Stayed there' – they were working across the bottom row on the top of the file cabinet now – ‘till a few minutes before eight Monday morning, when he checked out and headed back to Tucson. But the story ends, of course, just south of the Sun Lakes interchange.'

‘Where he had his accident.'

‘Yes. So now, my pretty –' he favored her with his Johnny-Depp-as-Jack-Sparrow leer, and twirled imaginary mustaches – ‘you like ze nize fresh dirt I dig up on High-Roller Henderson? Eh bien?'

‘Well . . . sure.' Realizing Tracy looked crestfallen, she roused herself. He had worked hard and done everything she asked, and here she was frowning because the results didn't meet her expectations. ‘Nice work, Tracy!' She gave him a high-five and two printouts flew off on the floor. They both bent to pick them up, and in the cramped space they bumped heads. ‘OK, Genius Geek.' She stood up, flushed. ‘You're terrific, now get out.'

‘Don't you want me to help you put these back in—'

‘No. There isn't room for two people to work in here. I need all my air to breathe while I decide what to do next.'

She was standing behind her reburied desk, pondering Henderson's incredible weekend, when six feet two inches and two-hundred-plus pounds of Ross Delaney bustled into her workspace and created a blizzard of brown-speckled pages.

‘Oh, sorry – Sarah, my God, what are you doing in here?' He stared around the jam-packed workspace as the mini-whiteout settled to the floor.

‘Setting up the Henderson report.' Sarah's voice came hollow and dry out of her stricken face.

‘This is all that one report?'

‘Yes. The Henderson case is beginning to make me feel like the sorcerer's apprentice.' She grabbed some paper out of the air. ‘I've cleaned my workspace three times since it started, and now look at this mess.'

‘Yeah, you better do something, we can't work in all this clutter.' Leering triumphantly, Delaney plucked a couple of sheets off his jacket, where they clung like baby birds. ‘First answer a question, though. I've got a big high-powered attorney on the phone who wants to come down and talk to us.'

‘Well, he can't come in here,' Sarah said. ‘I've got all I—' Something in his face stopped her. ‘What's his name?'

‘Devon Hartford the third. Of Hartford, Hartford and, uh . . .' he read off a note, ‘Zelnick. Roger Henderson's lawyer.' He watched her neck start to get red. ‘I told you it was going to be this kind of a case.'

‘You didn't say every day. What does he want?'

‘To save us some time, he says.'

‘Oh, sure.'

‘Says he has information that will be very helpful.' He pulled his nose. ‘Maybe before I say yes or no we ought to agree on what
you
want from
him
.'

‘I want him to back off. Because all this paper you see flying around here tells the story of Roger Henderson's weekend, and you need to hear about it before you waste any time listening to attorney bullshit.'

‘Henderson's alibi's not holding up?'

‘Henderson's alibi has more holes than a wheel of baby Swiss. And Ollie's getting the low-down on the bank records, and I need to go find that actress who served the party. She doesn't want to talk to me, so I suspect she knows something about the shooting.'

‘Ah. Well.' Delaney morphed into an inscrutable Irish Buddha, blinking and thinking. In the deep silence, Sarah stole covert glances at a drift of GPS information under her desk, twitching to pick it up. When Delaney snapped out of the zone he said, ‘Why don't we ask the attorney to come in tomorrow morning? And we'll keep what you got from the tracker to ourselves till we hear what he has to say.'

‘OK. While you were thinking I decided not to call before I go see the actress.' Sarah stacked a few sheets of paper, absently. ‘I think she needs to be startled a little.'

The ‘Closed' sign in the ticket window didn't mean anything, the girl with the violin case said. She was sitting on the bench by the sidewalk, looking adorable in hobo costume and fake freckles, alongside a boy in a clown suit. ‘Just go around to the side door and knock, somebody'll let you in.'

‘Down the alley there?' The girl nodded, bouncing all her braids. ‘OK, thanks,' Sarah said. ‘You waiting to rehearse a play?'

‘No, we're working a street fair today,' the clown said, bobbing his red nose precariously with every word. ‘We're waiting for a couple of our friends to come out and go with us. They're in there auditioning. Singing that godawful music from
Phantom of the Opera
.'

‘Ah. You know a girl named Felicity?'

‘Sure,' the girl said. ‘Everybody knows Felicity. I'm sure she's still in there. She won't leave as long as there's any chance for the lead.' They both laughed.

It took a lot of knocking. The kid who finally pushed open the door said, leaning on the panic hardware, ‘Sorr-ee! Couldn't hear you over all the noise.' He let her walk right in – why did they even keep it locked? ‘You here to audition? Follow me.'

She followed without comment, into a cavernous dusky space. Somewhere up ahead in the light, an exasperated voice was launched on a tirade. ‘Now listen, people, we can't have all this noise and confusion! I want the actors waiting to audition standing in a straight line right
here
, and everybody else, get off the stage
right
now
. Sit down and be
quiet
or I'm going to throw you out.'

Sarah grabbed the arm of the boy leading her, stood close to him beside an opening in the backstage curtain and whispered, ‘Which one's Felicity?'

‘Oh . . . by the piano. Holding the clipboard.'

He pointed to a thin, intense-looking girl, almost pretty, with a great fall of lovely dark auburn hair and bruised-looking eyes. Busily checking names off a list and grading performances, she remained so relentlessly self-aware that the hair she had tucked behind one ear stayed there while the hair on the other side fell straight and shining to her shoulder. Sarah made an ‘OK' sign to her guide and picked her way carefully through shadowy backstage detritus to the other side. When she found the right spot she stepped through the curtain, cradled her badge discreetly in her left palm, and held it in front of Felicity while she whispered, ‘Need to talk to you.'

The face that turned toward her showed shock and then terror for a couple of seconds. Felicity looked around for an escape route, disarranging the careful hair. But Sarah's right hand was clamped around her right shoulder and held her, locked in an odd, unstable embrace – Felicity in wriggling panic, Sarah firm as rock – while the baritone at the piano sang about love. Sarah said, just loud enough to carry into the ear two inches from her lips, ‘I just have to ask a few questions.'

Despite her discreet murmur the director heard interference and turned to glare. In Sarah's sight-line, Felicity's startled eyes replaced her ear. She blinked once, set the clipboard on the piano with a decisive little click, and whispered, ‘Follow me.'

Transformed in that instant into the leader, she stepped firmly around a bass drum and a stack of chairs, held aside a curtain and pulled Sarah after her down a short flight of steps and up a sloping aisle alongside empty seats. At the top of the slope she kicked up a doorstop and pushed out into the light. In the small hot foyer in front of the ticket booth she whirled to face Sarah. ‘You can't come around here like this!' she hissed. ‘What the fuck do you
want
?'

‘I need to talk to you about the night you worked the party at Eloise Henderson's house. The night she was killed.'

‘Why? I don't know anything
about
that.'

‘How come? You were there, weren't you?

‘Earlier. For the birthday party. Me and a couple hundred other people.'

‘So you can tell me the names of the guests?'

‘No! Well, a few.'

‘And the staff? You've worked with these people before, haven't you?'

‘Some. Maria and Ramón, they're the couple that work there steady.'

‘But the catering staff just comes in for parties?'

‘Right.'

‘What's the name of the company?'

‘Oh . . .' She looked aside vaguely. ‘I only work for them part-time.' Sarah waited. She finally said, ‘Party something—'

Sarah tapped her foot. ‘What's printed on their paychecks?'

‘Oh, right. Let's see . . . Party Down, I think.'

‘Thank you. Did the Hendersons always use that company?'

‘Now why would I know that?'

‘Would Ramón know? Or Maria?'

‘I suppose. Ask them.'

‘Who runs Party Down?'

‘What?'

Is she a little deaf?
‘The caterer, what's his name?'

‘Oh . . . uh . . .' She stopped in the middle of tossing her hair back when she saw the way Sarah was looking at her. ‘Zack.'