Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (52 page)

It was a small knot of people, and from their ages, Laura guessed that they were mostly friends of Ruby. Alex Williams was there, looking carefree.

Ruby looked distracted. It seemed to Laura that Ruby spent a lot of her time looking around for Alex, who seemed to work the crowd like a bumble bee. She was popular with the small gathering, and so easy on the eye.

Ruby seemed a little lost, as if she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. Laura was watching Ruby when Alex talked to the preacher. The preacher bent his head to listen to Alex and there was an expression of yearning on Ruby’s face. Alex looked in her direction and Ruby looked away.

For her part, Alex spent little time with her lover. She was too busy enjoying her position as co-hostess—if you could call a funeral something you’d host.

The coffin was lowered and the prayers were said as an electric mower droned in the background.

Laura watched Ruby and Alex at the gravesite. Alex’s expression betrayed nothing, even though she recognized Laura. A normal person might feel strange, having lied to a detective about her identity. But Alex didn’t care.

Once, while in a conversation with a friend of Ruby’s father, Laura caught Alex’s eye. Alex smiled at her as if she were an old friend.

Ruby seemed a little out of it, acknowledging words of sympathy, but oddly detached. In shock?

She didn’t act like someone whose plans had come together with the efficiency of a Swiss watch.

Maybe Alex hadn’t told Ruby about her stay in Madera Canyon.

Maybe Ruby didn’t know about Alex’s involvement in her brother’s death. Maybe Alex had been freelancing.

Laura didn’t know why she’d want to take one last crack at Alex Williams. Maybe just to remind Williams that she knew. Maybe it was hubris.

Or maybe it was just a warning to Alex that she wasn’t about to give up on this case.

Williams was alone for a moment and Laura took the opportunity to waylay her.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” Laura said.

“Thanks.”

“Of course, it was more of a gain than a loss, wasn’t it?”

Alex’s smile turned rigid. “I think we’re done here.” She turned away.

Laura put her hand on the girl’s arm and Alex spun around to face her. “You may be done,” Laura said. “But I’m not.”

Alex smiled. “Oh,
I’d
say we’re done. If you’re the best they’ve got, I’m home free, aren’t I?”

She turned on her high heel and walked away.

CHAPTER TWENTY
Second Saturday

One evening in September, everything changed.

It was Second Saturday again. Laura and Anthony had moved on to other cases. Many of them were easy to put to bed—domestics that turned deadly, a drive-by shooting, a fight outside a bar that escalated into a fatal stabbing. No real solving, Sherlock Holmes style, to be done. Just brutishness spilling over. Whether it was jealousy, or alcohol, or drugs, or stupidity, or defiance—these killings made up the warp and woof of her job. And sometimes it got to the point where the plain stupidity of it wore on her like an emory board on a fingernail, wearing down her empathy and (sometimes) diminishing her skills—just a little bit.

She had to recommit from time to time. Realize that these stories, while sordid and low and depressing, involved real people. People who had lost their lives, sometimes for the stupidest of reasons. People left behind whose lives would never be the same.

So many pointless deaths. So much abject stupidity. So much gratuitous cruelty. She had to remember to fight for the victims. She had to remember to help the people left behind, even when they themselves were mean and low and cruel.

There were the heartbreakers, too. Like a boy who shot his little brother with the rifle he got for his birthday. And a child who went missing—just disappeared one day—and was never seen again.

She was ready for a Second Saturday, ready for a few carefree moments with Matt.

So they ate at one of the open-air restaurants. The evening air was cool—September was a furnace during the day but nice when the sun dropped down below the horizon.

There were a lot of people out. Mostly kids from the U. of A. or kids from just about anywhere, both sides of 4th Avenue streaming with people. It was a fair-like atmosphere that Laura loved. Matt’s partner, Dave, held down the fort at Tucson Fire Supply, doing demonstrations on fire safety. Dave had spelled him so they could enjoy dinner at Delectables.

Laura had the Sean Perrin case on her mind. They’d walked past All Souls Shoppe earlier—maybe that was why. But the fact that there seemed to be no way to nail Ruby Ballantine and her lover worked on Laura.

It was nice out here, making small talk. They’d grown into a couple so long ago, but it still seemed miraculous to Laura that relationships hadn’t been what she’d thought them to be at all. That the best ones were easy. The best relationships were the ones where love was mutual, where they gave to each other and didn’t think so much about taking. Sure there were arguments, bound to be. But they loved to be together. There was no teeter-totter as there had been with her former husband (in which he was usually up and she was down).

It had ceased to be a revelation a long time ago. But every once in a while, on a perfect evening like this, she remembered to be grateful.

She watched the crowd funnel along the streets. Lots of kids, most of the young men dressed in dark colors. A stream of them. The beautiful evening, the cool air, the good food, a glass of wine. And Matt…

Then her eye caught one of the people shouldering his way through the street. She recognized him, sort of. Where had she seen him before?

He was in dark clothes but he was no kid. He was bigger, bulkier. He wore a navy sweatshirt with a hoodie.

She knew him.

She knew, too, that she’d met him in the course of her job.

“Hey, hey, whad’ya know? No telling
who
you’ll meet on the street.”

Laura glanced at the next table, which had just been cleared. Frank Entwistle sat in one of the iron chairs, his ill-fitting Sansabelts pooched out in his lap. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, you gotta trust your instincts, kiddo. And you
know
what I say about coincidence.”

There are no coincidences
. “You mean the guy in the hoodie?” Laura looked from Frank to the sidewalk. Hoodie Man had stopped to talk to someone. Laura squinted, trying to see in the gathering dusk. “He looks like…”

“Who looks like who?” Matt said. “Laura?”

Laura looked at him.

“Who are you talking to? Is that your ghost?”

It sounded like Matt was speaking to her from underwater. Laura looked back at the table. Frank Entwistle was gone. She wished he wouldn’t blindside her like that.

“Is he here now?”

Laura shook her head and looked for the man. She spotted him working his way through the throng. When he stopped and turned toward a street musician playing a saxophone, Laura got a glimpse of his face—just a pale orb in the dark.

Couldn’t place him. But the alarm bells were clanging now.

Something was wrong, something was out of place. Her cop instincts kicked in.

Frank knew
.

“Matt—I’ll be back, okay?”

She got up and went out through the wrought-iron gate. She kept with the crowd. She could see the man bobbing up ahead like a cork on a stream. One of many corks. He turned his head and looked at something across the avenue. She saw just a wedge of face, pale in the streetlight, which had just blinked on.

She
knew
him. From where?

Then it came to her: Joel Strickland.

Back at their table, Matt looked at her quizzically. “What was that all about?”

“Just some guy I recognized.”

“Who?”

She sat. “It’s the husband, you remember, the ex-husband or estranged husband of Ruby Ballantine?”

He knitted his brow. “I remember you telling me about him. Construction, right?”

“I just saw him.”

“And?”

Laura rubbed her forehead. The feeling was visceral. There was no explanation, except for her cop’s instincts. She said, “Remember, I thought Ruby Ballantine and Alex Williams killed Sean Perrin, but I couldn’t prove it, right?”

“Yes.”

“But I saw him right now—Strickland.” She paused. It didn’t look right. He was here, near All Souls Shoppe. Maybe he was seeing Ruby again. Maybe they had parted amicably. There were all sorts of reasons for her to think that, but it still bothered her.

Wrong place. Wrong time.

Matt leaned forward. “You think, what? That he had something to do with Sean Perrin’s death?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

Laura looked at her half-eaten plate, her glass of wine half-full.

“I guess, nothing.”

But it had ruined the moment.

Later they went by Matt’s shop. His partner, Dave, was just about to close up, and they stayed around talking for a while. The people on the streets had turned to a few separate knots of friends talking, but the crowd had dissipated and before you knew it the streets were empty.

As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, Laura said, “Let’s go check out All Souls Shoppe.”

“Why?”

“I’d kind of like to check on Ruby.”

“What’s going on? Is this about her ex?”

“I don’t know.”

He shrugged. “Always trust a cop.”

“Always,” Laura said.

“Always and forever,” he intoned.

“Always and forever.”

They walked up the street. The store was closed now, but when Laura peered through the windows she could see a light on way in back.

All Souls was on a corner.

Laura said, “Let’s walk around to the alley—see if she’s in back.”

They followed the street to Hoff Avenue, the narrow strip of asphalt that ran behind the 4
th
Avenue stores and served as an alley. Mission cactus about eight feet tall corralled the dirt lot behind Ruby’s shop.

A car was parked diagonally to the store, driver’s door open, lights on, engine running.

For a second, Laura thought it was Ruby’s car, that she was in the process of packing up her car and closing up shop, but then she spotted a charcoal-gray Armada parked up against a small adobe outbuilding that matched the store. She’d seen the Armada before and knew it belonged to Ruby.