Snake in the Glass (18 page)

“I do.” Nessa smiled a Cheshire Cat smile. “My son-in-law.”

Maybe we’d finally caught a break. “Can we call him now and tell him what we need?” I asked.

“Of course,” Nessa said. “I’ll call right now. Alex Gutierrez and Denis Ryerson, right?” When I nodded, she pulled out her cell phone and retreated to the other end of the room for privacy. She returned a few moments later. “He’ll get right on it, but he may not have anything for us until tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Nessa—it helps. And thank you all for being so patient. I’ll talk to Matt tomorrow and I can run by him what we’ve figured out, and maybe he’ll have some new ideas. I guess you two should get back to the shop.”

I ushered the women out the door, then turned to face Frank. “Am I crazy, Frank? I mean, to be so worried? It was bad enough when Cam was just missing, but now that we know someone might be willing to kill . . .” I couldn’t finish the thought.

“Em, don’t borrow trouble. I can tell you there’s funny business that goes on in the gem trade, but this could be something completely unrelated. And Cam might have done his work, left, and be sitting on a beach in Mexico right now drowning his sorrows with a bucket of margaritas. We’ll do what we can tomorrow, but right now there’s little to be done. “

“So we wait,” I said glumly. “I guess I’ll try to get some work done. What about you?”

“This and that,” he said. I didn’t press him.

“I’ll take the dogs out.” I sighed, then rounded up the pups and headed out. Normally I enjoyed our walks—the streets were usually bustling, and I felt safe, especially with two dogs, even if they weren’t exactly Rottweilers. But this week all the foot traffic had taken itself off to the Gem Show, and there were few pedestrians in my neighborhood. And after the last couple of days I was left wondering: How many other unseen plots and schemes had I missed? I liked Tucson, and I had built a life for myself here, but had I ignored the darker parts that I just didn’t want to see?

I spent the afternoon making a lot of simple glass
pieces, which was about all I could handle. Finally I gave up and went back upstairs. No Frank. I threw together a haphazard supper, walked the dogs, and went to bed. Unfortunately sleep did not seem to be on the schedule. I heard Frank come in an hour or so later. I had finally fallen into restless dreams when I was dragged back to reality by a loud pounding on the door. I found the light switch, wrapped a robe around myself, and stumbled out into the big room. Frank had roused himself as well and hung back in the doorway to the bedroom, at the ready. He looked surprisingly alert, all things considered.

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Stop making all that noise!” I yelled as I neared the door. I looked through the peephole: Denis. I pulled the door open, fast.

“Can I come in?” he blurted, and then shoved past me without waiting for an answer. He was alone. I shut the door behind him and turned to find that Fred and Gloria had blocked his path. Fred was growling low in his throat. He may not be large, but his teeth are sharp, and Denis didn’t seem inclined to challenge him.

“Denis, what the hell are you doing here? And where’s Elizabeth?”

“Elizabeth? What?” Light dawned slowly in his eyes. “Your police chief friend was looking for me?”

“Yes, he was, and he knows you left your house, with your wife
and
suitcases. He was coming to tell you that the medical examiner took another look and decided that Alex was murdered.”

Denis went pale again, and I wondered for a moment how I was supposed to catch him if he fell. “How?” he whispered.

“Somebody hit him over the head before they dumped him in the desert. Denis, what’s going on?”

“I need to sit down.”

I guided him to the couch, and he dropped heavily onto the seat. Frank remained where he was, silent and wary.

“You thought I was running? No, no—I put my wife on a plane. Elizabeth’s going to stay with her parents back east. I didn’t want her to get caught up in all this. Now I’m really glad I did—this is worse than I thought.”

“Does she have a clue what’s going on with you? What you’ve been doing? How could she not?” I was working up a good head of steam. I don’t like being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night. But then I remembered that odd scene when Denis and Elizabeth had stopped by the studio, and he’d told his wife a clumsy lie about what we were doing.

“She trusts me.”

The woman was either an idiot or willfully oblivious— maybe she just didn’t want to know what Denis was up to.

“I told her it was important but that I didn’t have time to explain it all, and I took her to the airport. But she got on the plane, I made sure of that, even though she had to charge her ticket on her own credit card, because mine’s maxed out.”

That’s right—Denis had no money, especially after he’d scrounged up the last bit of what he owed me. That would make it hard for him to pull a disappearing act.

“So why are you here?”

Denis’s gaze darted around the room, stopping briefly on Frank, who was still leaning against the door-jamb, looking wiry and tough in a sleeveless T-shirt and crumpled chinos. “I need a place to stay. I didn’t want to go back to my house. Em, there’s a killer out there somewhere! He might come after me next.”

So now he wanted to put
me
at risk too? “Denis, why on earth should I want to help you? You disrupt my life, you make vague threatening hints about my brother, your partner turns up dead in the desert—why should I do anything other than shove you out the door and kick your sorry ass down the stairs?”

“I didn’t know where else to go.” Denis looked like a schoolboy about to burst into tears. Didn’t this man have any other friends? But I realized that I really would rather have him under my watchful eye than out wandering the countryside where this unknown killer lurked. Maybe if I kept him here I could actually find out something.

In the morning. Nobody was functioning very well at the moment. In fact, Denis was swaying slightly and looked like a slight push would topple him. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. First: sleep, or at least rest. Denis, you get the couch. In case you’re wondering, I have no cash or weapons or anything any self-respecting pawnshop would want, so you can’t rip me off and disappear into the sunset—or maybe I mean sunrise—again. And if you do try to sneak out again, I wash my hands of you forever. If your mystery man tries to kill you, that’s your problem.”

“Huh?” Denis looked confused, and I realized he probably didn’t know that we knew . . . No, it was too much to sort out now.

I tried again, sticking to one-syllable words. “Denis, lie down on the couch and try to get some sleep. In the morning I will call the chief and we can try to make sense out of all of this. Bathroom’s that direction.” I pointed, then without looking back I stormed back to my room and shut the door—leaving Frank and the pooches to keep an eye on Denis. After getting into bed and turning off the light, I lay in the dark listening for a while, but I heard nothing and drifted off surprisingly quickly.

 

 

Monday morning. Since my second-floor apartment
is higher than most of the surrounding buildings in this commercial district, I’d never bothered with curtains on this side. Usually I enjoyed watching the light grow in the morning; this morning I could have done without it. I peered at my clock and was surprised to see it was almost eight, late for me. I heard low voices in the other room, so I decided it was time to get the show on the road.

After a detour to the bathroom I emerged and found Frank and Denis sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, apparently talking about gemstones. There was coffee, and Frank had laid out eggs, onions, peppers, and a few other odds and ends I had forgotten I even had. He, as usual, looked ready to wrestle crocodiles, blast him.

He jumped up when he saw me coming. “I’ll handle breakfast, Em. Denis here was just telling me about how he and his mate worked out the stone treatment.”

“Goody, goody. Is this something I need to know?” I filled a mug with coffee and sat down next to Denis. “You get any sleep?”

“Some. Look, Em, I’m really sorry about all of this. I had no idea . . . I mean, I’m not like this, not really. I’m just an average guy, with a job and a mortgage and all that. And I thought I was being smart, getting into this land investment thing—I mean, do I look like a land baron? I never thought it could end up like this.”

“Who does?” I muttered to my cup. Then I took pity on him. After all, who was I to throw stones? I’d had my life derailed more than once recently, and I had never seen it coming. “Denis, I appreciate your apology. Besides which, it’s too late to go back and change anything, so we’d better figure out where we go from here. You’re willing to talk to Matt? Full disclosure? Because I get the feeling you haven’t exactly told us everything.”

“I promise. You’re right. Besides, keeping my mouth shut is what got me backed into this corner in the first place. How is it you’re so tight with the police chief?”

“Long story, but suffice it to say we have a relationship. Which is damn lucky for you.” I stood up and retrieved my phone from where I had left it, turned my back on Denis (and Frank, now whistling cheerfully as he scrambled more eggs), and called Matt.

“Wha’?” he said coherently.

“Good morning to you too. Would you like to come over for breakfast?”

“What time is it?” he barked.

“After eight. You must have had, oh, maybe three hours of real good sleep, right? But I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Yes. Denis Ryerson is here.”

“Denis Ryerson?” The change in his tone was immediate.

“The same. He said he wasn’t doing a bunk but merely taking his wife to the airport to send her out of harm’s way. And he promises to tell all, if you get your butt over here.”

“Be there in fifteen.” He hung up. A man of few words is Matt.

He was on time. When he came in, he made civil noises to us all, but I could tell he was itching to get down to it with Denis. Frank had apparently made enough food for an army, or at least for four sleep-deprived people, so we first dispensed with eating, and I distributed refills on the coffee so we would all be appropriately fueled.

Once the plates were cleared, Matt pulled out a small notebook and put on his serious face. “Denis, are you ready to explain what’s been going on for the past week or two?”

Denis nodded. “As much as I can. I’m beginning to realize how much Alex didn’t tell me, but I’ll give you what I know. Where do you want me to start?”

“We know you two were partners and that you jointly owned undeveloped property north of Tucson. Do you have copies of your property records?”

“Uh . . .”

“You didn’t keep your own copies?” I burst in, incredulous. How could anybody manage a business without records?

Denis looked embarrassed. “Alex took care of a lot of that. He had a good accountant, and the accountant did our taxes. I just signed things, because I trusted Alex. Okay, it was dumb of me, right? I’ll admit it. But can’t you just get hold of the records? Or go to the city recorder’s office?”

“Yes, but that takes some time,” Matt said with admirable patience. “We could use a line on locations sooner than that. Okay, let’s move on to the gemstones. You said Alex found them on one of your properties. Tell me again why you started experimenting with them.”

“Alex knew that the stones, left untreated, were kind of average and not worth much, but he thought if we could play around with them a bit, we could make them more valuable. I agreed that it was worth a try. And it was kind of fun, almost magic, you know? You take this ordinary stone, cook it a bit, and presto, it turns into something else.”

“Got it. But why the deadline?”

Denis looked down at his hands, and I wondered if this was a sticking point.

“The buyer was calling the shots. I’ve got big bills coming due, and the buyer isn’t going to hang around if I’m any later. I’ve got to sell the stones, fast—I need the money. Alex found someone who would buy them, but the buyer said he was leaving soon. And I don’t have the time or the contacts to shop them around now. We were supposed to have things worked out in time for the Gem Show, but it took longer than we thought.”

I flashed Matt a quick look, before turning my attention back to Denis. “Who’s your buyer?”

“I told you yesterday I don’t know. Alex dealt with him, not me.”

I wanted to strangle the jerk. I managed to control myself and I asked, “When and where were you going to turn over the stones?”

“Are you angling for my job, Em?” Matt said. I glared at him but shut up. Matt focused on Denis again. “Can you answer her question?”

Denis slumped back in his chair. “Here’s the deal. A few months ago, when the real estate market started going south, we got a little panicky. We started hitting the casinos. I know, stupid move. And if there is such a thing as luck, we should have known that ours was in the tank anyway. I stopped before I got in too deep, but I can’t swear that Alex did, although I hope to hell it was his money and not the partnership’s. So after a month or two he comes to me and says, listen, there’s this guy and he’s offered us a deal—he’ll pay off what’s coming due in exchange for all the gemstones we find.”

“And what did you do?” Matt asked.

“Well, I can tell you I didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. We owned the stones, and we had every right to sell them.”

“Did you ever meet this man?”

“No.”

“Did it ever occur to you to ask why he was willing to help you?”

“I figured he thought he could sell the stones and make money off ’em. I wasn’t going to complain. Heck, he could have ’em all, as long as Alex and I didn’t go bankrupt.”