High Country Nocturne (21 page)

“Not at all,” I said. The reality was that I didn't want to be here and didn't care about this case compared with Lindsey's survival, finding her killer, and getting Peralta out of this jam. Less than a mile from here, I hoped, a SWAT team was taking down Strawberry Death at this moment.

But I had to play along for now, couldn't let my agitation show. I gallantly added, “You are very attractive.” And she knew it.

“You're so kind,” she said. “Do you have a Ph.D.?”

I nodded.

“So I suppose I should call you doctor…”

“No. I'm not a physician or a dentist. And you're not one of my students.”

She smiled. “I imagine you were a fine professor. Where did you graduate?”

“Miami of Ohio.”

“Ah, one of the ‘public Ivies.' I took Zephyr there. Such a lovely campus. She had the grades for it, but she wanted to be on the West Coast. She doesn't read books, you know, other than
Harry Potter
, even though she's smart as hell. Don't let her beauty fool you. I was very different. I loved books and history. Did you have a specialty?”

“The Progressive era in America through the New Deal.” All my academic insecurities were bubbling up, so I felt the need to justify myself. “My doctoral adviser had studied under Arthur S. Link, so the apostolic succession was continued.”

It was unclear if my name-dropping mattered. Her smile turned impish. “Was there a laying on of hands?”

“A Ph.D. dissertation defense isn't so spiritual. Anyway, he died a few years ago.”

“Somebody said that every time a professor dies, an entire library burns. So why aren't you teaching? Why become a cop?”

I told her it was a long story. The short version was that academia didn't like me as well as I liked it, and now there was such a surplus of history instructors that I'd be lucky to get a job at a community college in Lawton, Oklahoma. Then I tried to steer us back to the business at hand. I had more important things than chatting with a rich woman.

“It took me a long time after his death to start to go through his things. But I finally did, and I found the wallet.”

“Can you show me?”

Chapter Twenty-nine

We climbed the circular stairway that Zephyr had descended and Diane Whitehouse led me down a hallway and into an expansive bedroom. It held more pottery. More kill holes. French doors led to a balcony and a view of Camelback. The rain had stopped.

“This was Elliott's bedroom.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“As we got older, we slept in separate rooms. He snored. I wanted my privacy.” Her eyes assayed me. “Don't judge, Deputy.”

“Just taking in facts.”

She turned quickly and led me into a walk-in closet that looked as big as our guest bedroom, all dark wood and smelling of cedar. Golf shirts and slacks on stainless-steel hangers lined one side. Opposite these were floor-to-ceiling drawers and cabinets. Our reflections showed in a huge mirror at the back.

“I found it here.” She pulled out a drawer. “Under socks.”

The drawer was empty now. Or it appeared that way. She reached across me and pressed on the bottom, which popped up a panel. She pulled it out revealing a hidden space beneath. A file folder was the only object there now, secured by a black band. I asked what it was.

She shrugged. “Have a look.”

I put on a pair of latex gloves and pulled it out, slipping off the band. The folder held what must have been a hundred photos in color and black-and-white. Most were eight-and-a-half by eleven. Each showed a man posed naked, all of them young, all very fit with well-endowed erections. Their hairstyles ranged from perms of the 1970s to contemporary looks.

It wasn't mass-market gay porn and none showed a sex act. One or two men covered their faces. Most smiled. Each photo looked as if a lover had taken it as a keepsake. None had dates on them, but the photographic paper on the permed guys was brittle.

“I am not a homophobe,” she said. “But this isn't what I expected to find in my husband's closet. I was hoping for girlie magazines or something like that. Even
billets-doux
from women would have been better.”

“Where did they come from?”

“They were his. That's what I assume. It was his drawer. Only he came in this closet. He was an amateur photographer.” She shook her head. “Trophies.”

“This is where you found the wallet?”

She nodded. “Underneath them, wrapped in paper.”

One photo fell to the floor. It was the size of a snapshot. I picked it up and studied it. Tom Frazier smiled at the photographer in an outdoor setting, palm trees in the distance. Unlike the others, he was fully clothed.

I held it up. “Did you see this?”

She shook her head. “After I saw the first photo, I couldn't bear to go further. I'm not a bigot, Deputy. It's tragic if Elliott had to stay in the closet all these years.” She looked at our surroundings and giggled. “Sorry. ‘Highly inappropriate laughter,' as Zephyr would say.”

“This is the man whose wallet you found.”

The little crow's feet around her eyes deepened. “My God.”

“Do you have something I can put this in? I need to take the file with me.”

“I understand.” She opened another drawer and handed me a battered tan leather portfolio with Elliott Whitehouse's name embossed on the cover. “Please don't bring it back.”

I slid the file inside and pulled off the gloves. Then I asked if she knew the name Tom Frazier, if her husband had ever mentioned him? Both answers were no and we were dancing around an important question. She bit her lip and fell silent.

“Tell me about you?” I tried to move things along.

“Me? My family moved here from Chicago when I was ten. We lived in Maryvale. It was very different then, of course.”

“What kind of work did you do?”

“I was pretty aimless when I was young. Nobody paid for me to go to Stanford.” She laughed without humor. “I went to ASU, working my way through college. Had plenty of friends. I guess I was about as wild as anyone my age. Didn't you go through that kind of period?”

“Sure.” In my twenties, I had been driven and focused, missing out on the young lives of my friends, but what was that to her?

“I was working at Diamond's when I met Elliott. You know, Diamond's Department Store at Park Central? I haven't been down there in years.”

“It's closed,” I said.

Her shoulders rose and fell. “Anyway, Elliott was a self-made man and pushed me. So I went to graduate school. Started my own interior design company. Then when Zephyr was born, I enjoyed being a stay-at-home mom. Elliott let me collect pottery. I suppose he thought I needed an outlet of some kind.”

“Ever married before?”

“I came close.” She touched my left ring finger. “I see you're married. Happily?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been unfaithful?” She let her small hand rest atop mine and the atmosphere in the big closet closed in on us.

I gently pulled my hand away.

“So you have.” She smiled. She had a very nice smile. “Men have secret lives.”

“Women, too,” I said.

She sighed. “True enough.”

I turned with my back to the drawers and faced her. “Did you suspect your husband was gay or bisexual?”

She smiled again, sad this time. “Elliott was a man's man. He was of that generation. So much of him was hidden. Again, I think it's a generational thing. Men his age didn't talk about what was going on inside. Men your age can be different, thank God.”

I started out of the closet but she blocked me.

“Do you want to know what he was like in bed, David?”

That smile again. Not the sad one. The one with chemistry and danger. The kind that had taken me many years of experience to decipher its meaning. I still felt the electricity of her hand atop mine. She took off her glasses and tilted up her chin. I felt a finger in the pleat of my slacks. Then it ran down my leg.

I could have picked her up and fucked her against the wall right then. She was small and I was tall and as our romp continued we would knock down the dead man's golf shirts, rolling around on them.

I crossed my arms.

“I was a horny young woman, David. I still like sex. I need it. Don't you?” Her voice was husky. “Elliott liked that at first. After we'd been married for a year, we might have sex every eight months. If I was lucky. Believe me, I counted. But I liked the life he paid for. Do you think that makes me a prostitute?”

“No.”

“Then Zephyr came along. I didn't want her to be raised in a broken home. I suppose that was foolish. There was no prenup. This is a community property state and I could have taken half of everything. But I stayed.”

I nodded.

She ran her other hand through her hair. It fell back in place perfectly. “You know what's strange? He always had male assistants. Good-looking guys. I mean real hunks. I never gave it a second thought at the time. I was happy that he didn't have little babes that would bring out the green-eyed monster. Women who might replace me if he grew bored. But when I saw those photos, it all made sense. I wanted to throw up.”

“Why did you bring the wallet to Sheriff Melton?”

She dropped her hand from my slacks. The electricity shut off.

“I looked at the driver's license and did a Google search. I found a little article about this young man being found dead in the desert in 1984. It was his wallet. I thought his family might want it.”

She walked out, brushing past me, now more with impatience than flirtation.

I followed her into the bedroom.

“Do you suspect your husband was involved with Tom Frazier?”

“Who the hell knows?” She sat in an armchair and crossed those slim legs. “I don't even know Elliott, I realize now.”

“He never mentioned the name?”

She shook her head.

“This is a suspicious death,” I said. “Probably a homicide.”

Her face lost color. She stared at me, opened her mouth but no words came.

“Was your husband violent?”

She nearly jumped out of the chair. “What the hell are you implying, Deputy?” The “David” stuff was gone. “How dare you? Who do you think you are to say that Elliott could have murdered this young man?”

“You said that. I asked if he was violent.”

She whirled around and strode to one of the French doors. For a long time she stared out at the mountain. The top of the camel's hump had disappeared in the clouds.

Finally, a small voice: “Elliott was a man of extremes and he could be very generous. When I told him that I hated north Scottsdale, he bought this property and built this house for us. The more I learned about Native American and Mexican art, the more he bought me pieces. Very expensive ones.”

She turned back and her face was composed.

“I'm terribly rude. May I get you something to drink?”

“No. Thank you, though.”

She fixed me with her enormous beautiful eyes. “The answer to your question is that Elliott had a bad temper. It was worse when he was drunk, which was a lot. He hit me more than once. My dad had been an alcoholic, too. He beat me with a belt when I was fifteen years old! Shit, I thought it was normal. With Elliott, he would slap me and the next morning turn sweet and give me an expensive present. He'd want to take me out to dinner even if I had a black eye. I had worse than yours, believe me.”

“If he was involved with Tom Frazier and something went wrong, do you think he was capable of hurting him?”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “We always want to think the best of the people close to us, don't we? But those pictures showed me how little I really knew the man. So the honest answer is, I don't know.”

I handed her my card and started to leave.

“David, about what happened back there in the closet…”

“Don't give it a second thought, Mrs. Whitehouse.”

That smile again. “It's Diane. I wasn't going to apologize. I see something in you, David. You're special. I feared that Chris would send some knuckle-dragger and he sent you, instead. I always fell for brains. It's not as if I throw myself at men.”

I tried to smile back. “I'm very honored. I also love my wife.”

“To whom you've been unfaithful before. Only children confuse passion with love.”

She handed me her card and stroked my fingers. I let her do it.

“Call me if there's something you want, David.”

What I really wanted was someone who could find millions in missing rough diamonds and lead me to Peralta. Most of all, I wanted Lindsey to get better.

She watched me closely, this compact still-lovely woman, in her expensive black jeans and huge house and ancient pottery with kill holes, who had deposited this secret on Chris Melton's doorstep.

Until Ed Cartwright told me otherwise, until we knew Peralta was safe, it was my doorstep, too.

I left her in the bedroom and let myself out.

Chapter Thirty

I got half a mile when the phone rang. Kate Vare. Would I meet her?

She was sitting in an unmarked Chevy Impala in a parking lot off Twenty-fourth Street and Osborn. The homely one-story building nearby had once been a home-cooking restaurant named Linda's. Now it was a Mexican eatery. I pulled next to her in the timeless cop fashion, driver's door to driver's door.

Her elbow was resting on the doorframe, window down, and she looked me over. “Why are you so dressed up?”

“I went to see Diane Whitehouse.”

She cocked her head and I gave the elevator speech about Tom Frazier's wallet.

“Jeez.” She laughed, a strange sound coming from her. “Old Man Whitehouse in the closet? He hit on me once, you know. Years ago when I was a uni. Went to a burglary call at one of his subdivisions under construction. He talked to me about how hard it must be for me, being tough all the time, and I wouldn't have to be that way with him. It was a smoother come-on than it sounds.”

I took it in and said nothing. Even though it was getting toward noon, the streets were slick and moody, the rain clouds low and misshapen like boiling lead.

“I'd love to be there when you log in those photos as evidence,” Vare said. “Do you like him for this?”

She meant did I think the late Elliott Whitehouse, the legendary Phoenix homebuilder, had murdered his lover. Oh, and the lover was a young man.

I shook my head. “Frazier was found dead of a heroin overdose, but there's no evidence he was a user. If he was Whitehouse's lover, this seems like a lot of bother. Why not simply bludgeon him with a piece of rebar and dump the body in a mineshaft or bury it under a concrete slab? Hire a hitman. It doesn't make sense.”

“And why keep the wallet?” she said. “Maybe he thought it would make identification more difficult.”

“Except Frazier's car was within walking distance.”

“We almost caught your girl.” She changed the subject suddenly.

“Almost?” My stomach felt as if it had dropped five inches.

“She was at a house by the Biltmore. Up on Biltmore Estates Drive, with those lovely older places? This one was foreclosed on during the worst of the bust, only the neighbors wouldn't allow a sign out front. It was bank-owned and sat empty. Somehow she found it and was using it as her base.”

I looked straight at her and asked how they almost found her.

“Crime Stoppers call early this morning. We set up a perimeter and called in SWAT. Made entry at eight a.m. She was gone. But she'd been injured. Maybe a gunshot. She had performed surgery on herself, stitched it up. Left a bunch of bloody gauze and a suture kit. She was moving fast. Looks like she made it out through the golf course before we secured the perimeter.”

I leaned toward the steering wheel and let out a long sigh. It was not theater. My best hope for catching Strawberry Death had failed and she was on the loose again.

“Did you shoot her, Mapstone?”

I pulled out the Colt Python and held it up. “If I had shot her, she'd be dead, blown six feet back from the point of impact. Anyway, you told me that if I worked this case, you'd…”

“Yeah, yeah.” She shook her head dismissively. “I've changed my mind. This woman is dangerous as hell. I know Lindsey's in the hospital and for some reason you've got this special from Meltdown. But I need your help.”

“You? Need my help?”

Her sharp features tightened. “Don't fucking congratulate yourself, Professor. Help me.”

I could give her real help, but that would compromise the operation that Peralta and Cartwright were running. Too many secrets, too many compartments.

She said, “Why are you working for Meltdown?”

I told her the truth.

“You're an idiot, Mapstone.”

“I know.” It started to sprinkle. I watched the drops heal my dry hand.

“Lindsey wouldn't betray the country.”

“I know.” My voice was louder this time. “It was Saturday night and he was leaning on me. I needed to buy time.”

Vare shook her head. “And you went home, told Lindsey, had a fight, and she left to take a walk and cool down.”

“That's pretty much it.”

“You asshole,” she said. “Why didn't you tell me this to begin with?”

“It didn't seem relevant.”

“Let me tell you about relevant. Twenty minutes after we made entry to the house on Biltmore Estates Drive and secured it, Horace Mann showed up with a dozen agents. He ordered me to turn over control of the scene. My fucking scene! When I refused, he called the chief and…” She punched the steering wheel. “That was that. Why?”

“The woman must be connected to the diamonds.”

“Exactly. And she thinks you're connected, too. I checked the logs and we did impound the car you described. It was a rental, made with a credit card to a woman named Amy Morris. Have you heard that name before?”

“No.”

“You're not helping.”

“I'm trying.” Actually, I was lying again. Amy Morris was the name I first heard from the man who called Matt Pennington's office. That man was still waiting for me, as Pennington, to call him back.

Vare said, “I ran her and nothing. Nothing! The credit card had only been used once to rent that car. She used a North Dakota driver's license that was fake.”

“She's a professional assassin. She's got the tradecraft.”

“But who the hell is she and why is she here?”

“I think she's here to kill Mike Peralta and everybody close to him.”

“Sharon's okay…”

“She has FBI agents all over her. But when did the woman first show up? On the road to Ash Fork Friday night. I was driving Sharon's car and she was with me. This Morris woman was dressed like DPS, pulled out her gun and was ready to shoot me. She would have killed us both if the FBI unit following us hadn't pulled off the freeway at that moment. Morris gets in her car and leaves. The next time I see her is Saturday night outside our house. By that time, Sharon had a protective cordon outside her house. We didn't.”

Vare actually let me complete several sentences. She drummed her right fingers on the steering wheel, stared ahead. I could see the gears turning and that made me uncomfortable. Kate Vare had good gears.

“None of this makes sense, Mapstone. Peralta shot a guy, some old man who has a PI license, he stole the diamonds, stashed them in some woman's old Toyota, and disappeared. He doesn't even have the stones.”

Maybe Strawberry Death doesn't know that. Maybe she's simply out for revenge, whether the diamonds were recovered or not. I speculated out loud without giving away too much. I was relieved that she discounted Ed Cartwright as “some old man.”

She said, “Where is that suitcase? Does Chandler have it? I want to go through it. Maybe the shipment wasn't even the real diamonds…”

The gears were catching correctly. I told her Horace Mann had taken it into evidence.

“Fuck! Is Peralta guilty or is he running some kind of operation?” Her eyes bore into me.

I didn't dare even blink. “He's not guilty of a robbery. Lindsey checked his finances on Saturday. He's got plenty of money. There's no motive. If he's running an operation, he never told me.”

“FBI?” she said. “Peralta and Eric Pham were tight.”

“Pham's been sent to the Arctic Circle.”

“Then DEA or ATF. The ATF chief lives right down the street from you.”

“She took a post in France.”

“So what?” Vare said. “This thing has cartel written all over it. They use diamonds as a substitute for currency to pay for cross-border shipments of drugs, or to settle drug debts.”

“Peralta hates the cartels,” I said. “But he never told me he was doing anything more than working as a guard on the diamond shipment.”

“Maybe he wanted to protect you?”

I shrugged. “It didn't succeed.” I waited a few beats. Then, “Who is the go-to diamond fence in Phoenix?”

I already knew the answer. The only surprise was that she wasn't already thinking that way. She shook her head and promised to find out.

“If you find that person, the pieces might come together,” I said. “But you're poaching in a federal case.”

“Fuck them.” Her tone was adamant. “This is my town.”

She started the car but didn't leave.

“Did you know that Mann and Sheriff Meltdown are friends?”

My cheek and eye started burning insistently. “No.”

“Oh, yeah. They were in the Bureau together, both stationed in Minneapolis and Chicago at the same time. They were partners for seven years. Meltdown was best man at Horace Mann's wedding. I asked around. Something is really wrong here. No offense, but Meltdown didn't bring you back to the Sheriff's Office because you're such a brilliant cop. He…”

This time I interrupted to finish her sentence: “He did it because Horace Mann wants me out of the way.”

I stared out at the shabby streetscape, felt like the idiot she had described.

Vare pushed my elbow. “You are good at finding trouble, Mapstone. So go do it. Get in the way. But keep me in the loop. One more thing. If this Amy Morris is out there, she's not going away and she's coming for you. So as much as you love that wheel gun, you'd better carry more firepower. Now go find trouble. Call me, Mapstone.”

She stomped on the gas and fishtailed out onto Twenty-fourth heading south as the sprinkles turned into a hard rain.