Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (40 page)

Laura drove down to the live spot at another campground at the mouth of the canyon and checked in with Anthony.

“I located the sister,” he said. “Ruby Ballantine. She lives in Tucson.”

“Does she know anything?”

“Haven’t made contact with her yet. Just got off the phone with LVMPD. She’s his next of kin. Apparently, her name was on a form for a car loan.”

Laura stared at the deep black asphalt of the parking lot. Heard the sound of the restroom door closing. Smelled the restroom overlaid by the bitter smell of warmed-over oak leaves.

“I’m gonna head over in another hour. You want to meet me there?”

“Where is she?”

“She has a shop on 4th Avenue in Tucson.”

CHAPTER NINE
Ruby

Ruby Ballantine’s store, All Souls Shoppe, would have been considered unusual anywhere other than on 4th Avenue. There were three shops that sold kitschy western stuff, surrealistic lamp shades, paper mache skeletons, scented candles. Laura was charmed by the spookiness-crossed-with-camp overflowing the shelves.

No customers were in the store. 4th Avenue drowsed in the sun today, waiting for night when things would pick up. Anthony and Laura had stopped by Tucson Fire Supply, Matt’s business, for a minute just to say “hi”.

Ruby Ballantine was a petite middle-aged woman with a plain, friendly face and shortish gray-blonde hair. She was the only person in the shop, so Laura assumed she was the proprietor.

“Help you?” she asked in a soft voice. Her face was slightly red, and her eyes a pale blue. She wore a cotton blouse with the sleeves rolled up, capri pants, and sandals. Laura noticed her trim calves and forearms—some muscle there—she was on the slight side but athletic.

Anthony glanced at Laura, then turned to a shelf full of skulls.

Laura introduced herself. The woman’s smile faltered, then came back to full wattage.

“Is this about those kids on the street the other night?”

“No,” Laura said. “I’m afraid not. I’m sorry to inform you that your brother, Sean Perrin, has been killed.”

Ruby Ballantine stared at Laura, then stared at Anthony, who had his back to her looking at knick-knacks. She appeared stunned. “Sean?”

“Yes, Sean Perrin,” Laura said. “Is there a place we can talk?”

“Yes, of course. Back this way.”

They followed her through a door to a short hallway leading into a room that was part office and part storage.

Ruby appeared severely shaken. She offered them chairs, but flustered, she remained standing. “My brother, Sean? Are you sure?”

Laura said, “He was shot to death yesterday. In Madera Canyon.”

“Madera Canyon? That was his favorite…” She trailed off, looking into the middle distance. “I saw in the paper a man was killed there.” Paused. “That was him?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“He’s really gone?”

“Yes, I am afraid he is. Could you tell me a little about him?”

“Like what?” She seemed lost.

“Did he ever tell you about anyone who might want to hurt him?”

“I’m sorry, but he wouldn’t have confided in me. We weren’t very close.”

“Did he tell you he was coming out here to Arizona?”

“No. I had no idea he was out here. We don’t talk.”

“You don’t talk? At all?”

“We were never close—I’m eight years older than him. I don’t know. He just didn’t like … he and I didn’t bond. It was almost like we weren’t related. Do you have any idea who might have done this?”

“We’re working on it,” Laura said. She was aware that while Anthony appeared completely immersed in looking at all the great stuff on the shelves, he was listening and keeping an eye on Ruby Ballantine. Watching her reactions. Evaluating how she answered each question.

“So he wasn’t coming to see you?” Laura asked her.

“He didn’t call and say he was coming. But it’s possible.” She shrugged, and Laura saw something in the woman’s eyes. Sadness, maybe? Regret? But it was fleeting if it was there at all.

“Can you tell me anything at all about what he’s been doing recently?” Laura asked her.

“I think he worked in banking.”

“Was that something he’d done previously?”

“I think he mentioned that. Honestly, I hate to say this. I
really
hate to say this, but he was not on my radar. You must think I’m an awful person.”

“Not at all. How long has he been in Las Vegas, do you know?”

“Six, seven years?”

“And he was in touch …?”

“Christmas cards. We talked on the phone once or twice. He told me he got married.”

“Did he send you a photo?”

“Not of the wedding. But last year he sent me pictures of his wife and kids. It’s on my phone.”

“May I see?”

She scrolled through her phone and showed Laura the photos of the two children and the beautiful woman she’d seen in Perrin’s room.

“The kids are cute,” Laura said.

“They should be. Those are stock photos.”

Laura stared at her.

“I recognized them from an article in
The Huffington Post
. Something like ‘What’s the best way to cut cholesterol in kids?’”

They spent another half hour talking to Ruby, but she clearly didn’t know much about her brother, except that he was prone to tall tales.

Ruby added, “Maybe he wanted to see Dad for one last time.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. He’s not doing very well. I told Sean that six months ago, but it didn’t seem to make an impression, but maybe he changed his mind.”

“But he didn’t contact you?”

“No,” She said. “And I didn’t contact him after that. I knew it would be futile.”

“Yet he did come here.”

“He went to Madera Canyon, yes. Madera was his favorite place as a kid. But he didn’t contact me.” She added, “Was he there long?”

“We’re not sure,” Laura lied. In an interview, she tried to give away as little as possible, even to the bereaved.

This woman seemed more confused than bereaved.

“I’d like to speak to your father,” Laura said. “Can you arrange that?”

She smiled ruefully. “I wish I could. But he’s in a coma.” Abruptly, she covered her mouth. “Oh, no. I’ll have to make arrangements for Sean. What do I do? Is he … ?”

Laura told her he was currently with the Medical Examiner. She wrote down a number on the back of her card. “I’ll try and let you know when he can be released.”

Ruby turned bewildered eyes to Laura, and then to Anthony. Scanned both their faces.

“Who would do this to him? Why?” she asked.

Laura had no answer for that.

As they walked out into the sunshine, Laura felt a coldness in the pit of her stomach. The man had been surrounded by people, but he was all alone.

It seemed the only person buying the legend was Sean Perrin himself.

CHAPTER TEN
On The Run

They split up and Laura went back to Madera Canyon. Anthony was going to see if he could access public records on Perrin’s marriage—although he thought that would be a fool’s errand.

Laura caught up with the handyman, Robert Waller, who worked off and on for Barbara Sheehey—he lived down in the valley but sometimes spent the night here. “Last night was one of them.” He said it in such a way that Laura realized he wanted her to know that he and Sheehey were lovers.

Robert Waller had insomnia. He’d heard “one or two” cars go by on the road. None pulled into the parking lot and none drove out—he would have heard that.

“So by the time you went to bed, Sean Perrin was already gone?”

“His car wasn’t there when I went into the house.”

“What time was that?”

“Around nine p.m.”

Which fit the time frame of the shooting. Still, the connection was tenuous. Laura would have liked to know when he’d left. If he’d driven straight from the cabins to the trailhead up canyon, she’d have a good fix on when he was shot.

Right now she was going with the idea that Perrin did drive straight up to the trailhead, possibly to meet someone, and had been shot as he waited.

“Anything else?”

“He gave me some shit about being a Navy SEAL.”

“Oh?”

“I shined him on, mainly because I didn’t want to get into a fight with a paying customer. Kept my mouth shut for Barbara’s sake.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t no Navy SEAL. I know because many, many moons ago I tried out for the SEALs myself. I’m one tough sonofabitch, but Hell Week got the better of me and damn if I didn’t wash out. I said a few things to test him out, and he failed.”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure. The man must have been watching too many TV shows. I don’t take it lightly, folks saying they’re SEALs when they aren’t. All’s I could do to keep from punching his lights out.”

Laura walked out to the road, wondering if anything Sean Perrin had told people was true.

How do you tell what’s important and what isn’t, when you have a whole skein of threads? Which one or ones did you pull out and think, “This might be real?”

Laura had no idea.

One thing, though: At least his corpse didn’t lie.

Barbara Sheehey called out to Laura from the cabin she was cleaning out across the way. “You ought to come and talk to Terry!”

“Terry who?” Laura called out.

“Delmonte.”

A woman popped her head out. She was tanned and on the scrawny side, with long black hair in pigtails. She nodded and smiled as she stuffed a pillow into a clean pillowcase.

Laura crossed the lot.

“Terry helps me out,” Sheehey said. “She has some stories about Sean.”

Laura looked at Terry.

“You two go on ahead, you can use the office. Terry, you can uncrate those new mugs and tees while you’re talking to the detective.”

Terry smelled of cigarette smoke. She was also flighty, moving around the office like a hummingbird, never lighting. Fast, efficient, and, Laura guessed, on something like speed. She had a triangular face, hatchet-like features, and crimson lipstick that matched her nails. She talked a hundred miles a minute, but what she said added to the already-crowded portrait of Sean Perrin.

“He said he was on the run.”

“He told you that? He was on the run?” This was becoming a common theme.

“Uh-huh. He said he had trouble in Vegas—bad trouble. Mob trouble. He told me because I’m the kind of person people always confide in, I dunno, it’s just how I am. He said he had to tell
someone
, he couldn’t stand it anymore, keeping it in like that. He asked me for my advice but there’s no way I could help him—not after what happened to that woman.”

Woman?

“Between you and me, I just wanted him to not say anything more, but I dunno, people think of me like a priest at a confessional, seriously. Everybody comes to me with their problems, but nothing like this. You don’t think he told the guy who shot him that I knew anything about this, do you?”

Laura said, “I don’t know. What is ‘this?’”

“What he told me. I guess not. If anyone was gonna shoot me too, I figure he woulda already done it. Besides, Sean talked to everybody same as he did me. So whoever shot him would have had to kill everybody in this place. ‘Scuse me, I need a cigarette. You wanna come outside with me and we can talk some more?”