The Last Blue Plate Special (24 page)

“Brontë, stay,” I commanded as I opened the door and ducked my head against the wind. In the beam of my flashlight I saw the
tumbleweeds massed against the fence, but nothing else. No half-dead snake, no chilled-out chuckwalla, no baby bighorn sheep
lost in the storm and bleating to be fed warm milk from the fingers of a rubber glove. There was nothing there.

Dodging tumbleweeds, I walked to the other side of Brontë’s run just to be sure. The flashlight’s yellow beam captured little
pictures set in stark relief. A palo verde limb suddenly white against a tangle of shadows. A cracked granite boulder sparkling
with flecks of iron pyrite, seeming to float on the blackness behind it. Cholla cactus and rabbitbrush springing up and then
falling into obscurity like puppets on a darkened stage. And then I saw it. Or I saw
something.
A disturbance in the sandy dirt beside the back of the dog run about three feet from the fence. Something had been there,
but I couldn’t tell what. The ground was merely disturbed, not smooth like that adjacent to it.

Animals leave tracks. Foxes, coyotes, lizards, even snakes leave tracks. Especially in wet sand. Falling tree limbs and dislodged
rocks can also leave marks in sand, but the limb or rock will still be nearby. There was nothing near the rumpled patch of
ground. There were no tracks. A chill spread across my eyes, causing them to narrow as I took the little .38 from my waist
pack and thumbed the safety off.

Gun in my right hand and flashlight in my left, I moved past the patch of earth somebody had smoothed, staying several feet
away. It wasn’t hard to see the footprints leading from behind a creosote bush toward Coyote Canyon. Human footprints. Wearing
shoes. The ground was saturated and soft. Somebody had stood there while Brontë barked and flung herself against the fence.
Stood there long enough for her to bloody her paws and chest and throat trying to guard her property, which is the nature
of Dobies. They’re atrocious swimmers and mediocre trackers even when trained, but a Doberman will guard its home to the death.

“Good girl,” I told my dog somberly two minutes later. “There
was
somebody there.”

She continued to pace at the door, but she’d stopped whining. The look in her eyes was now expectant.

“Whoever it was has a fifteen-minute start on us,” I said. “There’s no point.”

Hangdog again.

I tried to think like Roxie and the rest of the world, tried to be practical. The person who had stood by Brontë’s run in
a desert storm might be some inebriated camper driven out of Coyote Canyon by the rain, and might be a murderer. Sword knew
where I lived, had been there before, and seemed to have some special interest in me. Either way, tracking that person into
Coyote Canyon in the dark made no sense. There are a million places to hide out there. Hide and wait. Brontë and I would be
like cardboard ducks in a shooting gallery. Or worse.

“Absolutely not,” I told her.

Broken spirit, broken dog. A dog who had failed the charge of her breed. Head down, ears laid back. A dog in ruins, and an
Academy Award performance. I couldn’t stand it. In her place, I would want another chance, I thought. Sometimes love means
helping a good soul save face. Even when it involves a bit of risk. So much for the rational approach. Which just doesn’t
work. At least not for me.

“Oh, for God’s sake, all right. Just give me a few minutes to get less white,” I said.

After changing to black pants and shirt I burned a few pieces of typing paper in the sink and ground the ashes to powder in
a bowl. Then I stirred in some vegetable oil, making a black paste, and smeared it on my face and the backs of my hands. The
process took an extra ten minutes, which was fine with me. Brontë’s spirit was what mattered. I didn’t want to catch up with
the prowler. This would be a charade, nothing more.

High clouds were still blowing west over the mountains, obscuring the light from a quarter-moon. Brontë and I had no problem
staying in shadows as we sprinted toward Coyote Canyon. I’d taken only the flashlight and gun and could have left the flashlight
behind. The prowler’s tracks were clearly visible in the wet desert dirt. Even in the dim light the tracks held deep shadows.
It was too easy, I thought. Almost as if whoever it was
wanted
to be followed.

Brontë moved swiftly across the familiar terrain, seeming to know what she was doing even though she’s no tracker. From time
to time she stopped to make sure I was following, then dashed ahead. At the entrance to Alcoholic Pass, which connects Coyote
Canyon at its mouth to Rockhouse Canyon on the eastern side of Coyote Mountain, she stopped again. The shadowy tracks, about
the same size as my own, vanished into the pass’s rocky, difficult terrain.

Brontë was happy, no doubt having convinced herself in some canine way that she’d driven away danger and secured the perimeters
of her territory. I knew she’d be content to go home now. The purpose of the outing was fulfilled. But I wasn’t quite ready
to go.

Alcoholic Pass is a jumble of broken rock that can only be crossed on foot. It opens into Rockhouse Canyon, where there is
a dirt road. It seemed likely that whoever had been hanging around my place had left a vehicle on Rockhouse Road, hiked through
the pass, and returned by the same route. But why?

My place wasn’t broken into, Brontë wasn’t really harmed, nothing was done. So why would somebody clamber through a desert
pass over cracked boulders, stand around in a storm enraging a dog for a while, and then clamber back over the same boulders?
The behavior, I thought, was that of a child. That aimlessness.

Maybe it was just the adventuresome child of people camped over in Rockhouse Canyon, I thought. Maybe the child had wandered
onto my property and seen Brontë in her run. Most children like animals, especially girls, and I remembered that my feet had
been the size they are now since I was eleven. Maybe the child had wanted to pet Brontë or play with her. Maybe the child
had stayed near Brontë during the storm in an attempt to reassure her. I conjured up a vision of a big-footed eleven-year-old
in jeans, an experienced desert camper whose parents let her roam free out here, hovering near Brontë and whispering, “It’s
okay. I won’t hurt you.”

But why would a child erase her footprints?

“Let’s just go a little way in,” I told Brontë.

It was darker between the crumbling walls of Alcoholic Pass. And the wind made strange sounds as it blew through a thousand
rocky crevices. At one point it seemed to be the mewling cry of a cat or human infant. At another it was a sucking roar like
a huge whirlpool into which only a fool would look. And that fool, I reminded myself, would never be seen again.

Brontë trotted beside me, almost invisible in the gloom. Twice I tripped over unseen rubble, the second time falling painfully
on my left knee. I didn’t want to switch on the flashlight, making myself a well-lit spectacle for anybody who happened to
be watching. And I didn’t want to go back. Not yet. Then through the grit blowing in my eyes I saw something familiar in the
middle of the trail ahead. Something that did not belong in Alcoholic Pass.

Nothing is perfectly round in the desert, and nothing is white. In other areas of the Anza-Borrego there are cannonball-shaped
concretions of mineral in the rock, but they only look round from a distance. Up close their surfaces are lumpy and uneven.
And while the desert palette contains infinite gradations of beige ranging to the palest creamy ecru, nothing is bleached
to real white. Yet there was something perfectly round and white on the trail ten feet ahead, reflecting the minimal light
like a beacon.

Brontë loped closer to the object, sniffing the air and then the ground as if she were a bloodhound. Then she stopped. I could
hear her low growl as I caught up with her. The thing on the narrow, desolate trail was a blue willow plate.

Quickly I pulled Brontë into the dense shadows beneath a tilted slab of granite that probably had broken away from Coyote
Mountain long before any human eye had evolved to see it. The Smith and Wesson tucked in the waist of my pants gouged my side
reassuringly, and I curled my hand over its grip but didn’t pull it up to firing position.

There was nobody in Alcoholic Pass but me and Brontë, and I knew it. No sense of another presence, no sense of danger. Brontë,
tense and alert beside me, seemed to know it, too. Her growl had been in response to a visual anomaly. Round white thing where
there have never been round white things before. Dog version of my own reaction.

“Brontë, stay,” I commanded. Then I walked to the plate and picked it up.

It was one of the old restaurant blue willows, divided into three sections by raised ridges. In a diner the three sections
would have held a main course and two vegetables. Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and corn, maybe. Now it held nothing but wind.

“Come on, girl,” I called, tucking the plate under my left arm and switching on the flashlight. “Let’s go home.”

Against my ribs the plate was a not-uncomfortable burden, like any awkward thing we nonetheless carry around. Like the clutter
of awkward things we eventually carry home. Cuckoo clocks, pressed flowers in frames, sorrows.

The prowler had been Sword, I realized, but the purpose of the visit had not been to harm me. Despite my precautions I’d been
an easy mark for anyone waiting in Alcoholic Pass. The purpose of the visit had been a child’s game of hide and seek within
the corridors of this ruined cathedral few visit and fewer love. Nothing more. A strange night game in a place where nobody
goes.

I thought about that as Brontë and I made good time getting home. Sword had come out there twice, each time leaving a gift.
Blue willow plates. The first a cheap contemporary product, the second more valuable. Was I being rewarded for something?
I wondered. Or was I being given clues I was expected to understand? That sense of childlike desperation followed me like
a ghost in the wind.

Play with me,
it demanded.
I know a neat game. Come on, play.

The lights from my place cast a hazy yellow bubble that didn’t move in the wind. In minutes we were inside and it felt good
to be safe, have some coffee, take a bath. But I couldn’t shake a sense of inexplicable sadness that seemed to lash about
outside in the wind. It felt like the sadness of a child who cannot understand what’s happened, why no one wants to play.
And I wondered if there would be a third plate, and what that would mean. In the chants of childhood games, three is a final
number. Everything ends after three tries. The third time, I remembered, is the charm.

I
t was nearly eight when the phone rang. It would be Roxie, I thought, feeling a little guilty for not having called her earlier.
She’d want to hear my take on the interviews, having no doubt already received a report from BB.

“Hi, hon,” I answered.

Wes Rathbone didn’t even chuckle at the gaffe. “Get a cell phone tomorrow, Blue,” he ordered. “Rox and I have been trying
to reach you since you left Christopher Nugent. Why haven’t you picked up the messages on your machine? Bettina Ashe died
this afternoon. Her husband authorized an autopsy, which was performed immediately. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage.”

“Oh, my God,” I breathed into the phone. “Wes, did somebody send a deli tray? Did somebody send fancy food to her house today?
She should have been warned about that, but—”

“Nobody sent anything to the Ashe mansion, and the staff would have thrown it out in any event. Her husband, John Harrington,
had been warned about the possible connection to unusual foods. He’d also hired a squad of security guards to patrol the place
and never let Betsy out of his sight. He was with her when it happened. Her head was still wrapped in bandages from the surgery
yesterday, but they’d uncovered her eyes so she could watch a video. He said they were watching
Dr. Zhivago
when she complained of a terrible headache, became dizzy, then collapsed on the floor of their bedroom. Death was apparently
instantaneous.

“I don’t have to tell you he’s beside himself, threatening to sue everybody including us, and I don’t blame him. I’ve already
talked to Berryman about your interviews today, but I want a written report from you tomorrow morning. Right now I just want
to know what you think. Which one of them is doing this, Blue? If you’ve got a good idea I’ll have whoever it is brought in
and interrogated. Keep him in a tank all night with some undercovers who’ll scare the shit out of him. We can break him, Blue.
But who the hell
is
it?”

The words pushed me against a wall. The words and the panic behind them.

“I don’t know, Wes,” I said. “I need to look at some data on behaviors connected to grief, also rape victims and divorce,
before I can sort any of it out. Isadora Grecchi’s a time bomb, but it’s men she can’t stand. I’m almost certain she’s been
the victim of some kind of sexual assault. But that shouldn’t pre-dispose her to kill women. Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Berryman pegged Grecchi, too,” Rathbone said. “We’ve got a subpoena to get her juvenile records from Colorado, but it’ll
take weeks. All we know is that she was made a ward of the court in 1958. Everything else is sealed. It’s not enough to bring
her in, but I’ve got a surveillance team watching her house.”

Brontë was lying on the floor beside me, licking the scratches on her chest.

“Wes, Sword was out here again tonight and left another blue willow plate. Has Grecchi been home tonight? Say, for the last
five hours?”

“Not for the last hour and forty-five minutes,” he answered dismally. “Surveillance was set up by six-fifteen, and the house
has been dark since then. She’s not there. But it’s still not enough to pick her up. Blue, did you
see
her out there? Did you see
anything
?”

“Just footprints, then the plate on the ground. The footprints are about the same size as mine.”