R.P. Dahlke - Dead Red 04 - A Dead Red Alibi (7 page)

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Chapter Eleven:

The good news was that Caleb had been able to light a fire under the telephone and electric company
which meant the well worked and we now had water for the sinks and toilets when the detectives arrived.

They
immediately separated us, putting me in the living room and my dad with another detective outside in the shade of the patio on one of the two folding chairs we’d found in a closet.

I added patio furniture to my growing list of items we needed to make this house a home and nervously watched the door.

While we waited, I leaned close to Caleb quietly going over the questions I’d been asked.

“Relax,
” he said. “It’ll be over soon.”

“I was fine until they sprang the news on me that the art compound property used to belong to a member of our family.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“They didn’t tell you? Evidently, Aunt Mae used to own all of this,” I waved my hand around the room. “One hundred and forty acres, including the art compound.”

“That’s interesting, but what’s the connection now?”

“Like they need another reason to pin a murder or two on one of us?”

“What did you tell them?” He squeezed my shoulder to show me I was overreacting again.

“I told them the truth; that I didn’t know she used to own it, but it wasn’t all that big of a surprise, either. My great-aunt Mae and her husband were rich by anyone’s standards and they bought whatever they fancied.”

“No crime in that, sweetheart.”

“Then he wanted to know if this was our first trip to Arizona, and when I told him it was, he still tried to nail down Dad’s every footstep since he got here
. He did that little mouth pursing thing, like he didn’t believe a word of it. I hate it when cops do that.”

“Interrogation techniques. Don’t worry about it.”

“He asked if he might’ve taken a vacation this summer,” I said, rubbing my hands together as if to wipe away the suspicious deputy. “I told him summers are much too busy for a vacation, and he pounced on that with—‘Your father’s retired, isn’t he?’ He ought to live in my boots for a summer. No one has vacations where I work.”

“What else?”

“I told him my father was retired but he still answered the phone and wrote up orders and such. I left out that he does so when he isn’t squiring widows around town. I hope Dad remembers to tell them about his trip to Alaska last year. I suppose that will be used against me, too. After all, it was summer, right? What did they ask you?”

“I had my interview yesterday. They
have copies of all the files from Modesto—the murdered pilot this year, the body last year, the two the year before that.”

“Gee, when you say it like that, I do look like I might be a killer.”

“Homicide is just doing its job. You answered all their direct questions truthfully, didn’t you?”

My heart rate picked up. “I forgot to tell the detective that Dad sold the business. You think
I’ll be in trouble for that?”

“I wish you’d stop,” he said, and went to the fridge for a couple of cold sodas.

I got off the couch but couldn’t stop my unremitting pacing. What was taking so long? What else could they possibly want from him? Should I start looking for a lawyer? Better yet, should we start looking for suspects? That was a ridiculous notion. I didn’t know anyone here, and the dour faces of the detectives indicated there would be no help coming from that quarter. I sniffed back a tear. The regulars at Roxanne’s café, the farmers, chemical salesmen, and newspaper cronies, The Lalla Bains Posse of Proficient Gossips, were all in Modesto, California.

Caleb could do background checks, but he really couldn’t
ask or get answers, not without overstepping his position as an out-of-state lawman.

The French doors opened and the deputy ushered my dad inside.
Dad saw me, squared his shoulders and attempted his most reassuring smile.

I wasn’t fooled for a minute. After Homicide finally trooped out of our home, I turned to the men and said, “We have to do something.”

My dad, looking old and defeated collapsed into a chair.

Caleb simply shrugged. “My hands are tied.”

That feeling of panic was gathering way too much space in my head. I needed to slow down and think. Where would I go to find the kind of help we needed? The kind that required time and trust built up over years. Who could we depend on when we didn’t know, much less trust, anyone?

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Chapter Twelve:

I spent a restless night going over and over hopeful ideas on how to get the kind of proof that would satisfy the Cochise County Sheriff’s department and allow all of us to leave Arizona.

When my cell phone rang the next morning, I was already on the patio, coffee by my side, working on ideas for my non-existent investigation. Since we had no cell service, all I could do was glance at the name on the incoming call. Seeing who it was, I rushed to the home phone and called her back.

“
Pearlie,” I gushed. “Just the person I need.”

“Howdy,
Cuz. You tired of Arizona yet?”

“Home does h
ave a nice ring to it about now.”

“Too much quiet, huh? Glad to hear you’re through moping, because it’s time to get cracking on that office space.”

“Not that again. Office space is a bit premature, when you don’t even have a P.I. license, isn’t it?” I asked, flopping onto a couch.

“We have to appear prosperous, don’t we? And if we want to look official, it’s location, location, location.”

At my lack of comment, she asked, “You got somethin’ better to do?”

No, I had nothing to do except prove my dad innocent of murder. And hadn’t I spent a restless night wondering who I could call? Someone the police didn’t already have on their list of suspects?

“Pearlie, how soon can you get to Arizona?”

“What’re you
talkin’ about? I’m already at the airport.”

“Gassed up and ready to come out for that visit, huh?”

“Sugah, I’m at the Sierra Vista Regional Airport. Put some pedal to the metal and get out here. We can talk about our new business over food, I’m starved.”

I was still thinking I should tell her that it was a no-go on the P.I. business, but yesterday, seeing my dad looking like he’d been beaten with nightsticks I folded.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll be there in about a half-hour.”

My dad’s
gray mood immediately improved at the mention of his favorite cook. He was so happy; he shaved and put on a clean shirt.

Granted, he’d done well with our long time housekeeper’s Mexican fare, but when family problems convinced her to move to Bakersfield, my dad thought he’d never get another decent home-cooked meal again. Then Pearlie and Great-Aunt Mae flew in for my wedding, and though Dad bristled at the idea of housing two more women for the time it would take to see me married, the minute he tasted Pearlie’s cooking, he did a complete about-face.

“What’s this about Pearlie being here in Arizona?” Caleb asked.

“She flew Aunt Mae home, turned around, and flew
back to Sierra Vista. She’s got some whacked idea we’re going to start our own P.I. business.”

“You have to have a license for that,” said Caleb. “And last I h
eard, it’s a six month course. You also have to be bonded and get a concealed weapons license.”

“She has a way of ignoring those pesky little issues.”

“Well, flirting won’t count for diddly-squat with the California State License Board,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I have just the thing to sidetrack her from going back to California.”

“Now, Lalla, let’s not ….”

My nerves finally snapped and I whirled on him. “This was supposed to be a vacation for my dad too, Caleb, and you can see how that turned out, but we can’t go home. I say hang the forty-eight hours. If you won’t help, I’m going to start looking for suspects before they decide to arrest my father.”

Caleb shook his head. I could tell he was thinking. If I let Pearlie in on this there would be no controlling the two of us. My thoughts exactly.

“Listen,” I said. “I’d take ten annoying cousins over having my dad getting grilled like
yesterday.”

“You’re right, of course,” Caleb said. “Has he been taking his heart medication?”

“He brought it. I know because I checked his bag, but the altitude here is the problem. I’m still huffing and puffing when I walk, and it must be twice as hard on him. Let’s go get Pearlie, bring her up to speed, and if Dad’s health doesn’t improve, I’ll look for a heart doctor in town.”

Dad came out of the bedroom tucking the clean shirt into his
pants. He swiped up the keys to the Jeep and announced that he would drive. “You two can fill me in on the way to pick up Pearlie.”

I was hopeful my cousin’s arrival
would help us. It would certainly improve my dad’s mealtime enjoyment.

“So what’s the verdict, Caleb?” I asked. “
You talked to Homicide yesterday. Do they have any real leads to these murders?”

Caleb shook his head. “Other than
your dad’s jacket at the scene, and the fact that your great-aunt Mae once owned all one hundred and forty acres around here, they don’t have anything.”

“I told you so,” my dad said.

“Detective Tom said he’d keep us updated,” Caleb said.

My dad snorted.
“Then we just sit and wait until they find a suspect?”

“We’ll see about that,” I said.

“Where’re we going to put her?” Dad asked.

“Pearlie? If she doesn’t want the couch, we’ll get her a hotel room at the Copper Queen,” I said.

My dad hesitated. “Think we should tell her about the two murders?”

I laughed. “Are you kidding? Why do you think I’m picking her up? She’s going to help us find a killer.”

“That’s a great idea, Lalla,” Dad said. “Isn’t it a great idea, Caleb? And she’s a really good cook too.”

Caleb shook his head again. “I don’t know,
Lalla, your cousin is notoriously reckless.”

I secretly smiled. Pearlie’s antics in the last murder case were distracting him from my own tendency to circumvent the rules. Still, I didn’t
want him to count her out, and we needed her.

“She helped us catch that contract killer from Vegas, didn’t she?”
I asked.

Caleb shrugged, “She can always use that bowling ball she keeps in the plane to bring
this one down.

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Chapter Thirteen:

The waiting lounge at the Sierra Vista Airport was empty except for Cousin Pearlie and a uniformed pilot. Pearlie was perched on top of a metal desk, her short skirt hiked up to reveal sleek round thighs and dimpled knees. She was giggling at something the pilot said, and his grin said Pearlie was an unexpected and pleasant diversion for a long wait.

She looked up, saw us, and pushed off the desk. Pulling her skirt down, she winked at her latest conquest then turned her bright blue eyes on us.

“Cousin
Lalla, Uncle Noah!” She hugged each of us in turn, then squinted her baby-blues at Caleb. “And that no-account skunk who left my cousin at the altar.”

“Pearlie,” I whispered, “we’ll talk about it in the car.”

“Fine by me,” she said, lifting her chin. “Then he can carry my bags.”

Caleb glanced at the four suitcases, handed the lightest to
my dad, and followed us to the parking lot.

Settled in the backseat, I asked about her pilot friend.

“He flies the big shots with some international mining company. After you show me around Nana’s old place, we’ll leave for California, ‘cause I have a date with him in San Francisco tomorrow night.”

“We’ll talk about that. I think after you hear what’s happened you might want to postpone that date.”

I showed Pearlie the house and the barn where a sleek little race car had been sequestered for fifty years. She gasped at the antique race car.

“Dad’s now fixated on restoring it,” I said.

Pearlie laughed. “I heard about this old thang. Granny said he loved it like a baby and it went everywhere they did. Odd, that it’s still here.”

“We thought so too.”

“It’s still Granny’s though, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “She can have it back. I don’t need it.”

Pearlie’s eyes lit. “I like it,” she said. “Maybe she’ll let me have it.”

Maybe my great-aunt Mae hadn’t meant to leave her husband’s Bugatti to me. I would have to ask her, but right now, I had to bring Pearlie’s attention to t
he events of the last few days: my dad’s disappearance down an abandoned mine pit, the two murders, and lastly how I really needed her to be here to help me find suspects.

“So,” I asked Pearlie, “what do you think?”

She laughed and wiped her dusty hands off onto her pants. “Didn’t I tell you to wait until I got back to get into trouble again?”

“Trust me on this,” I said. “This was not as much fun as you might think. Someone murdered two people; a young woman who owned the property behind us and Wishbone’s police chief.”

“Well then, time’s-a-wastin’. What’s next?”

“Let’s go into the house and talk to the men.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“The only problem migh
t be how you introduce yourself,” Caleb said.

“How’s that?
” Pearlie asked. “Oh, you mean me being a Bains and all. This family does tend to become suspects in murder cases, don’t we?”

She moved her plate aside, opened her purse and fanned out four business cards for us to choose from.

I picked up two. One said Georgia Smith, Private Investigator and a cell number. The next one said Pearl Bains and a listing for an internet floral company. She handed me a third for my inspection. It said, Crime Scene Cleaners with the same cell phone number.

She put a pink-tipped nail on each card and explained. “All the numbers are the same, flowers are a good opener for when you want to talk to the family of the deceased, and a crime scene cleaning goes hand in hand with murder, don’t it?”

“What about the fake names?” Caleb asked.

She shrugged. “I can say I accidently picked up my business partner’s card. It’s just a card. I’ve been studying up for my P.I. license and learning all sorts of great ways to get suspects to talk.”

“About that,” Caleb said. “You can’t represent yourself as a private investigator until you’re licensed.”

“Oh please,” Pearlie responded. “Anyone can call themselves an investigator and I
ain’t so dumb that I’d wave around a fake license.”

She eyed me when she said it.
The intent was to remind us that she knew all about the fake police badge I used to get information out of witnesses. I’d retired the badge, but Pearlie was on a roll.

“Besides,” she said, “I’m a sight better looking than you are, Caleb Stone. You got cop-walk, whereas I’m just a cute
lil’ blond from Texas, new in town, looking for a job or a place to rent or a haircut,” she said, primping her blonde locks. “We’ll start at the local beauty parlor. They always have the best gossip. Besides, Lalla and I need our roots done, don’t we, Cuz?”

Caleb’s eyes narrowed in warning. “You and
Lalla will have to stay out of the way of the sheriff’s department.”

Pearlie patted the outside zipper on
her purse. “Sure we will. An’ I got my Lady Smith, don’t I? I checked and I can carry it on my hip if I want. I’m cautious, so there’s no need to worry, now is there?”

~~~~~~~~~~

That night, Caleb and I lay snuggled together under the sleeping bag, the bedroom window open to the cool night air.

An owl hooted, then a chorus of coyotes yipped and sang, and a dog barked.

“That was awfully close,” I murmured, sleepily.

“Doors are locked, sweetheart,” Caleb said, snuggling up to my bottom, “and the window’s too high for him to crawl in and join us.”

I reached behind me to smack his naked thigh. “You’re making fun of me again.”

Another couple of barks brought my eyes wide open.

“Why is he barking?” I said.

“Because he can,” Caleb whisper
ed, tickling my ear.

“Well he should go home before some critter gets him,” I said pulling the covers up over us.

Caleb’s hand drifted possessively to my hip. “I’ll protect you, little lady.”

That got a chuckle out of me. I was little for about the first five years of my life, after that, I didn’t stop growing until I’d surpassed every boy in my class except Caleb. I took it for granted that
his growth spurt would keep up with my own. His six-foot-one-inch lanky frame was exactly three inches taller than my five-foot-ten. A short stint at modeling in New York, two bad marriages, and one ugly divorce for him, and we were together at last. I sighed happily, closed my eyes and slept.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the morning, I took my coffee to the patio and promptly swore when I stubbed my toe on a plastic bucket full of water.

“Who left this stupid bucket out here?” I yelled to no one in particular.

My dad poked his head out of the door to see what all the commotion was about. “What’s your problem? Oh, the water. That’s for the dog.”

“What dog?”

“Stray, I guess. Saw him when we first got here. I started leaving him water, now I put out leftovers, and it’s working.”

“What’s working?”

“Got to hand it to him, he figured out right away that if I whistled, his dinner was here.”

“What about other animals? If you leave out food at night, we’ll have coyotes and other critters in our back yard.”

“I know that. I usually bring it in before bed. He knows if he doesn’t come when I whistle, he has to wait until the next day.”

“But he could be a neighbor’s dog.”

“I doubt it. I called our rescue maven and neighbor, Karen. She said most folks keep their dogs fenced or in the house at night.”

“Coyotes?”

“Mountain lions, rattlers and drug runners are more trouble for dogs than coyotes.”

“Drug runners—oh, they would shoot them to stop the barking, wouldn’t they? Are there many mountain lions around?”

“Karen says this used to be a regular animal migration corridor. The Mexican gray wolves wander in every once in a while, even the elusive jaguar has been spotted here.”

“Really? I thought they were only in Central and South America.”

“She has photos. Offered to show me next time I come by.”

“But what if your
dog
is a wolf?”

He shrugged. “Nah. Looks more like an Australian cattle dog. Short coat with standup ears the size of Kansas. Or maybe that’s because he’s so skinny.”

I cut my eyes at him. “What if he’s got rabies?”

“I’m not going to corner him to find out,” he said. “But if he doesn’t try to bite me, I’m going to see about getting him to the vet
.”

He wiped up the water stains on the patio and dragged the pail over to the faucet to refill it. “It’s going to be hot today, so I’m leaving his bucket full, but I’ll move it out of the way. You see him, don’t scare him, okay? He’s spooked enough as it is.”

I could add wolves and jaguars to my growing list of dangerous animals. No wonder that dog was nervous.

I went inside, topped off my coffee and joined Caleb at the breakfast table. “You have a shower yet?”

“I will as soon as your cousin vacates the one and only bathroom.”

“I’m out,” Pearlie said, wrapping a towel around her wet hair. “And because I’m considerate of others, I’m not even going to use the hairdryer. Now how about I make y’all some biscuits and eggs?”

I privately smiled. She was lining her virtual pockets with good deeds for when she needed the men to be amenable to her own requests.

Sure enough, when Pearlie and I announced that we were taking the Jeep to go to the store, only Caleb took notice.

“Which one?” he asked. “In case I need to call you?”

Knowing he just wanted to keep tabs on us, I said, “I have my cell. You can call me if you need anything from town.”

Grabbing my purse, I picked up the Jeep keys before my dad could object.

I shouldn’t have worried. Dad was already on his way to the barn where he’d spend
the day on his new pet project, getting the race car in running order.

I kissed Caleb and hurried after Pearlie before he could think of any more questions.

Pearlie was waiting by the passenger side. “I suppose I’ll need a boost.”

I reached below the passenger seat and attached a strip of nylon with a stirrup on one end and a hook on the other to the ledge of the passenger door.

Pearlie stuck her foot into the stirrup and hopped into the seat. “What’s the point of having to use a stirrup if you don’t have a saddle to go with it?”

Pearlie
simply adored a good ol’ fashioned Texas roundup, but so as not to destroy the illusion that she was roughing it, she also had someone pulling her twenty foot trailer at a discreet distance.

“Dad says the height is to avoid getting stuck when driving over rocks,” I said.

She shook her head. “I think I’ll stick to driving on paved roads. Let’s go into Wishbone.”

“What for?” I asked.

“So’s we can get the lay of the land. Size up suspects. That sort of thing.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Pearlie and I dawdled at interesting items in the downtown gallery windows. I pointed out pottery, paintings both western and modern, glass art, and bronze sculptures. One bronze in particular drew my attention. It was a horse pawing the air, nostrils flared in defiance of a lasso just out of the scene.

I drew Pearlie’s attention to the window. “I’ve seen this artist’s work before.”

Pearlie murmured a comment, but was busy admiring a hand-blown glass vase.

I insisted she look at the horse. “This is exactly like one a guy was working on at the art compound.”

Pearlie nodded. “That’s the place where the owner was murdered, right?”

“Yes. Since Deputy Dumb-Ass ordered us to stay in the patrol car while he went off to secure the murder scene, there was nothing to do but look around. That’s when I noticed a man
in the barn working on a huge bronze horse just like this one.”

“And it’s the same artist?”

“I’m sure of it,” I said. “I thought it was odd that he wasn’t hanging around waiting to talk to the deputies, but maybe the police already interviewed him.”

“Or maybe he had a deadline on the sculpture.”

“Or maybe he’s a killer.”

“Puts a whole new twist on the word
deadline
, don’t it? See? I knew coming into Wishbone was a good idea. Let’s start at the art compound,” Pearlie said. “I read the front page news about the owner’s murder at the airport. There were no pictures of her in the paper, but the article said she was only in her twenties and already a recluse. Now why would a young girl like that want to live like a hermit?”