R.P. Dahlke - Dead Red 04 - A Dead Red Alibi (17 page)

Menu in hand, Pearlie squinted at the print. “Mm-mmm. I think this says…. Here, you look. Does that say chimichanga?”

I took the menu and agreed that the item was indeed a
chimichanga. “Don’t you have reading glasses?”

She grabbed back the menu and folded her hands over it. “If I’d remembered to put in my contacts this morning, I wouldn’t have to suffer the indignation of having to ask
you
for help.”

“I didn’t know you wore contacts, but now that I think about it … they’re colored so your eyes look blue
r, right?”

“My eyes are blue. Cerulean blue,” she said, lifting her chin as she does when she thinks she needs to defend herself. “I got distracted
when I took that early morning phone call from Julio and I completely forgot to put them in. And for your information, it’s a blue tint so if I drop ‘em I can find ‘em again.”

“Uh-huh.” I wasn’t going to argue. This was my Texas
fashionista cousin. “And if he doesn’t show up, or he’s already eaten? You’re still going to order?”

She sighed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. We’re here,
ain’t we? Look, his house is right down that road, we can always pay him a visit. Maybe his granddad will invite us in for lemonade and cake.”

I groaned. “I keep eating like this, I’m going to be wearing your clothes.”

“You’d have to have curves to wear my clothes,” Pearlie said, flipping her blond hair over her shoulder. “As for us eating here instead of at home, obviously you wouldn’t know about the rewards of dining socially. It’s all about interacting with others over a meal, exchanging pleasantries, catching up with friends, that sort of thing. You should try it sometime.”

My cousin was spitefully baiting me for my gaff about her weight
and I had allowed an unnecessary habit to flare up again in front of strangers. I knew her weight was a sore subject. My fault, but she always chose the tender spot in my shallow armor in which to drive her point. It wouldn’t do to respond in kind, not when we were supposed to be, as my cousin called it, detecting.

I stared at the white-knuckled grip she had on her fork and decided to
wave down the nearest waitress.

Chimichangas
dispatched, bill paid, a waitress confirmed that the deputy always goes home every afternoon to check on his granddad. We took Red Mountain Road, same as last time, taking a right turn at the battered and BB riddled mailbox with the name Dick spelled out in stick-on reflective tape.

Obviously, no one could miss seeing visitors coming since we trailed a mile long rooster-tail of dust behind us.

Mr. Dick stood on the porch, a shotgun cradled in his arms.

I was feeling a
bit parched. Maybe this time I would accept a glass of cold lemonade.

I pulled up clo
se to his porch and said hello.

He squinted and cupped a hand to his ear to show he couldn’t hear over the engine, so I turned it off and got out of the car.

That’s when I saw him lift the shotgun to his shoulder, and squinting one eye, sight down the barrel. “You shouldn’t have come back here.”

.

Chapter Twenty-seven:

My hands flew up in surrender. “Mr. Dick, please! We just want to talk to your grandson.”

He lowered the gun and spit over the porch. “That’s a lie and you know it. You’re looking to pin them two murders on my boy.”

“Mr. Dick?” Pearlie waggled her fingers for his attention. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“You’re working for that no-account Mac Coker, aren’t you?”

“But Mr. Dick, he’s Bethany’s father, so naturally he’s …”

His grip on the shotgun tightened. “Yep. And as my pappy always said,
show me the company you keep, and I’ll tell you what kind of man you are.
”

Mr. Dick and my father should meet. They could compare shotguns and unfathomable quotes.

“What is it about Mac Coker that annoys you so much?” I asked.

“He’s a thief and a liar, and since you think so highly of him, you have five seconds before I start shooting.”

Pearlie and I turned toward the Camry.

“Not that way! You girls can leave the same way you came in here the other day. Do you some good. Think about whether it’s worth it to work for that rattlesnake.”

Pearlie and I looked at each other. Up the hill? It was already after noon and the temperature would soon climb into the nineties. It would be a long walk, not to mention dry, and our water bottles were in the car.

“Mr. Dick,” I said, reaching for t
he door handle on the rental. “Can I at least get out some—”

When he racked the shotgun to show us he meant business, Pearlie did an about face and took off running.

I trotted after her. But when I heard a rock ping next to my foot, I picked up the pace.

Behind me, I heard his wheezy cackle. The crazy old coot.

Catching up with my cousin, I advised her to slow down. “We’re going to need to conserve our energy.”

She looked back over her shoulder. “I guess lemonade and dessert are out of the question.”

“Deputy Dumb-Ass did say the old man had good days and bad days. I guess it’s safe to say that Abel Dick won’t be our mole inside the sheriff’s office.”

“
Whad’ya mean?”

“Weren’t you listening? The old man thinks we might try to pin the murders on his grandson. And as my daddy likes to say,
where there’s smoke there’s fire
.”

“My throat’s on fire, does that count? How long,” she said, swallowing dryly, “do you think it will take us to hike out of here?”

“I have my cell phone,” I said, patting the holder on my belt. “We get to the ridge and we’ll be in range for cell phone service.”

Pearlie wiped at the sweat running down her face. “Thank God you’re such a tomboy. Belt loops add inches to your waist line, you know.”

On Pearlie, belt loops would be a fashion disaster, but I didn’t have any such qualms. In and out of airplanes all the time generally didn’t allow for anything but the utilitarian belt and cell phone case.

“An hour at the most,” I said, stepping onto the goat track. “Can you walk in those shoes?”

“If I don’t die of heatstroke first,” Pearlie muttered, picking up her feet to avoid getting dirt between the toes of her pink sandals.

With Pearlie’s constant whining and complaining, the uphill climb felt a lot longer than I’d estimated. But it was either trek up the hill with the sun beating down on our heads or chance Granddad Dick’s shotgun again.

We’d been gone for four hours when we’d only meant to visit Reina at the hospital and then go home. At this rate, it would be sundown before we got to the top. I sank down onto a rock next to Pearlie, rubbing my sweaty hands on my jeans and wondering if Caleb was worried about us. I could only hope that he was now out looking for us.

Shading my brow with a hand, I stood and squinted against the afternoon light.

On the ridge of the bluff, a mirage shimmered. It looked like a man, waving at me. I waved back. This was no mirage. It was Caleb! He had found us. I reached down and pulled Pearlie to her feet.

“Come on,” I said. “It’s Caleb. He’s waiting for us at the top.”

Pearlie followed my pointing finger. Energized by hope, she waved and shouted.

He waved and shouted back.

“Thank God! We’re saved,” Pearlie cried.

“We still have to get there.”

“What? I can’t possibly take another step. My feet are killing me and I’m all hot and itchy.”

“I told you to wear your boots,
” I said, disgusted with the whining.

“They make me look short.”

“You are short. He’s not going to wait all day, Pearlie, let’s go.”

I heard another shout, but the wind carried his words away. Then a rope flew over my head and landed about ten feet off the goat track.

“Oh,” Pearlie made little mewling sounds of longing and staggered after it.

“Be careful,” I called to her. “There might be snakes on the hill.”

She swung around, hands on her plump hips, furious that I would presume to keep her from her rescue. “What is it now? I’m exhausted, hot and sweaty, and I just want to get the hell outta here.”

She blinked and looked down at her feet. “There it is. Come to mama,” she said, reaching for the rope.

The rope, however, was a couple of feet behind her, and that’s when I heard the distinct sound of a warning rattle.

Pearlie lurched upright, screamed and stumbled back into a bush.

There was a whisper of movement in the dry grass as the rattler slithered away.

I ran to her side, but my cousin was still kicking and screaming.

“Oh my God,” she said, eyes wide, holding out her right hand. “I’ve been bit!”

I squatted down and looked at the hand. I found one tiny puncture on her forefinger, but the skin was already an angry red.

“If you were wearing your contacts you’d have seen that snake wasn’t a rope.”

“Stupid me.” She sniffled, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “And here I thought I couldn’t afford to waste any water on tears, when now I’m
gonna die!”

Fussing at her about her contact lenses when she’d been bitten by a rattler was also pretty
stupid. She’d saved my life and proved her mettle more than once in my book. I owed her. Certainly, I could manage my impatience better than this.

“You just have to stay calm,” I said, “I’ll get Caleb and we’ll drive down and pick you up.”

Pearlie whimpered. “Don’t leave me. I’ll die before you come back.”

Well, thi
s wasn’t working, so I reverted to being her older cousin. “You’re not going to die, so just suck it up kiddo. We’ll get you to the hospital and the antivenom you need.”

She sniffled once more, but my strong dose of reality finally did the trick and she quietly nodded.

Leaving the safety of the goat track, I was drenched in sweat by the time Caleb reached down and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me up onto the road.

I leaned in to hug him then recoiled. This wasn’t Caleb. It was Deputy Dick, his brow furrowed in an angry glare. “Where’s your friend?”

There was nothing to do but pray he wasn’t here to kill us. “She’s been bit by a snake.”

“I figured it was something bad. That woman has some lungs on her.” He
tsked and said, “You got no damn business being where there’re rattlers.”

“Not by choice!
Your granddad ran us off with his shotgun.”

He visibly flinched. “Sorry about that
. If you’d just called instead of going to the house, I would’ve warned you this wasn’t one of his good days. Where?”

“On her hand. She was going for the end of the rope you threw and touched a snake instead.”

“I meant how far down the trail is she?”

“About as far as the end of that rope you threw.”

“Then there’s no time to waste,” he said, pointing me to the passenger side. “Get in.”

I noticed that his truck was white, a big Dodge Ram with a chrome grill, and sure enough, it had a bull sack hanging off the trailer hitch.

I thought about resisting, but changed my mind. If Deputy Dumb-Ass wanted to kill us, all he had to do was wait until I got to the top and then kick me off the hill, leave my cousin to die of snakebite, and no one would think it was anything but an accident. It was the desert and people died out here. Caleb had barely made it, so how could two women expect anything different?

“Can you drive the truck down there?” I asked, forcing a calm voice I didn’t quite feel.

“Of course. It’s uphill that’s the problem. Buckle up and hang on,” he said, and the truck tipped its big nose over the ledge then flopped down on all four wheels. We bucked and jumped rocks, careened through bushes, dust smothering the windshield until he turned on the wipers.

“There she is,” I pointed.

I jumped out and ran to her side. Her face was pale and sweaty, but she was conscious. “We’re here, Pearlie, can you walk?”

When she nodded, I attempted to pull her to her feet. She swayed and moaned, shaking her head. “I-I can’t…”

Deputy Dick bent down and hoisted Pearlie up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “What the hell you been eating?”

Pearlie’ head snapped up, her face red and tearstained. “If I’m too heavy, you can just put me down!”

Ignoring her outburst, he readjusted his grip and started up the goat track.

I struggled to keep up, but in spite of the deputy’s
dour behavior, he was incredibly gentle with my cousin when he settled her inside the truck.

“You get in next to her,” he ordered, hurrying around to the driver’s side.

Pearlie slumped against my shoulder and closed her eyes, all the fight gone out of her.

He got into the driver’s seat, started the engine and tilted the
A/C vent to flow over Pearlie’s dirty red face. A fierce expression crossed his features. “The hospital in Sierra Vista has snake bite serum. They’ll fix her up. Hang on, it’s gonna get rough.”

Though the truck bucked and jostled like a rodeo bull trying to unseat its hapless riders, we made it to the bottom intact.

As we passed his house, I looked at the deceptively serene setting. “Your granddad won’t torch my rental car, will he?”

“I don’t know why you’d think that. My granddad’s a lot of things but he’s not a pyromaniac.”

“He took potshots at us and forced us to run up that hill.”

“I came for you, didn’t I?” he said, his shoulders hunched defensively.

He was right. He rescued us and now he was driving as fast as he could to get her help.

“Thank you,” I said. “How did you know where to find us?”

“The waitress at the café said you two were asking about me. I wish you hadn’t gone back to our ranch. I knew it would upset him.”

“Upset
him
? Pearlie and I could’ve died on that hill.”

“I told you, today is not one of his good days.”

“Oh? He seems to think we’re trying to frame you for Bethany’s murder. What’s that about?”

“Granddad has dementia. I doubt he knew what he was talking about.”

“He sounded pretty lucid to me. He knew who we were and that Mac Coker hired my cousin to help find his daughter’s killer.”

“Then maybe it’s one of his good days,” he said, going back to staring at the road. “It comes and goes, okay?”

“What’s his problem with Mac Coker?”

The deputy glanced at me before pulling onto Highway 92 and punching the gas. A few miles passed before he spoke again. “Mac Coker bought the lien on our property a while back. I’ve been trying to help, but even with two jobs I can’t make enough, not in time for the sale coming up at the end of this year.”

“Mac owns your property?”

“The tax lien. We have to pay it back or he gets it for the back taxes. In the last few years
, he’s picked up four other properties along Red Mountain Road. It’s the drought. Ranchers have been quitting their places right and left. Dicks have owned property here since before Arizona was a state, and losing that land is gonna kill my granddad.”

I looked to the south where a rusty trickle of water and a hard metal fence bisected the U.S. from Mexico.

What were the chances that a man like Mac Coker with his ties to organized crime was getting ready to become a real estate developer? Or was he paving the way for a massive corridor for drug transportation?