The Laura Cardinal Novels (52 page)

“Do you know Shana?”

“I met her once.”

Terse. Disapproving.

“So they were picking Shana up on the way? Did anyone mention Shana’s boyfriend?”

“I know Dan didn’t want him there. At the wedding.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t like him. Neither did Kellee, but she gave in when Shana insisted she wouldn’t go unless he could be in the wedding party, such as it was. Kellee is—was—like that, a peacemaker. She’d rather give in than have any unpleasantness.”

“So Kellee and Dan didn’t like Bobby Burdette?”

“
That
was pretty clear. Kellee couldn’t understand what Shana saw in him. She thought he was a bad influence.”

“How so?”

“Something Kellee said. She was worried about Shana getting in trouble. When I pressed her on it, she wouldn’t say anything else.” She shrugged. “Sometimes Kellee could be like that—she’d just clam up.”

“Did you ever meet Bobby?”

“Just the one time I met Shana. I didn’t like him either. Kellee was worried about it, but if you ask me, it was just a transition thing.”

“A transition thing?”

“The transition from adolescent to adult. The end of high school, trying to decide what to do? It hits all of us in some way or another. Even people who have it all together and know what they want to do. So many rules you grew up with now don’t apply—college is your first great freedom. Unfortunately, a lot of kids abuse that freedom and get into trouble.”

“You think Shana was in trouble?”

“What do you think? Twenty-one years old, she’s already divorced with two kids.
Forget
college. In my opinion, that girl painted herself into a real corner.”

Laura ignored the holier-than-thou tone and pressed on. “Kellee ever mention that? The fact she wasn’t going to college?”

“Oh, no. Kellee was the kind of girl who respected people’s privacy. She tried very hard not to appear judgmental. Besides, I think it was just a general worry. Dan probably didn’t like the fact that Shana was so dependent on his parents. Here they are, they’ve already raised
their
children, been responsible adults, you know? And then they get saddled with—maybe ‘saddled’ is too strong a term; there’s something in it for everyone in these kinds of family dynamics—but Dan was such a stand-up guy, you know? The kind that didn’t lean on anybody, and Kellee was the same way. It had to bother him on some level.”

Laura added to her notes and then said, “I need to look at her room again.”

“The other—” She stopped herself and smiled. “Just a followup, right?”

“Right.”

“Her parents already came and got her stuff.”

“I’d like to take a look anyway.”

“Why not?” she said brightly.

As Laura looked through Kellee’s room, she contemplated the Byzantine tunnels of Amy Dawson’s mind. “Forget orthopedic surgeon,” she muttered. “You should be a psychiatrist.”

Laura drove back to Williams and stopped by Shade Tree Mechanics on the way into town.

As she opened the door to the glassed-in office, she noticed a young man in a blue-gray jumpsuit slamming his palm against a soft drink machine. Big kid. His movements ponderous, like a bear’s, as if standing upright wasn’t all that comfortable for him.

“Jamie Cottle?” she asked.

He turned to look at her, blinking furiously. Freckled bovine face, unusually thick jaw.

“No, I’m Walt.”

“Is Jamie here?”

He turned his attention back to the machine. “It
always
does this.” He kicked the vending machine hard. Coins trickled down into the tray and he scooped them up. “Jamie’s not here on Mondays. He working on your car?”

“No. Where can I find him?”

“He lives with his folks on Oak.”

The house on Oak Street yielded nothing except the perception of the kind of people who lived there. A blue spruce dominated the front yard, a few stray pinecones littering a neat, green lawn as perfect as velvet. The house was a pale yellow ranch with a shingle roof, a travel trailer tucked up along the side. A satellite dish up top, a flag hanging from a pole attached to the garage. No answer to the illuminated doorbell. Laura left her card with a note on it for Jamie to call her.

Laura’s phone rang the minute she got to her car.

“I’ve got the tent back,” Richie said. “How about we meet at the lake in twenty minutes?”

When Laura got to the lake, sunlight was bouncing off the water and into her eyes. Normally, there would be fishermen standing at the edge, fishing lines catching the light as they whizzed out through the air. There would be a soft
plunk
, the egg sinker quickly falling down through the water. Not much more noise than that, maybe the sound of a cooler lid coming off, a rattle of a paper bag or Saran Wrap unwinding from a sandwich, the scrape of a shoe on dirt as someone shifted hindquarters to a more comfortable position—all sounds magnified by their proximity to water.

A solitary sport done in the company of strangers, easygoing but insular.

That’s what this lake should be.

Or maybe there would be kids splashing and chattering and screaming. The smell of charcoal smoke drifting over the water. But today there was no one. Just a police car parked across the entrance and yellow crime scene tape quivering in the breeze.

It seemed strange, as if people had not just deserted the lake but the world on this silent early afternoon.

Laura remembered the times she and Billy had gone camping up on Mt. Lemmon near Tucson. They had a red tent just like Dan and Kellee’s, the kind a young couple might get at Kmart. She remembered what it was like to be a college kid off camping with her boyfriend, the world full of promise, madly in love and burning from it. The world revolving around them.

The same age as Kellee and Dan.

Dan and Kellee’s tent had been reduced to a forlorn circle of nylon, the vibrant color bleached away, but not enough to banish the ghost map of their blood. The material was punctured in several places—grouped shots.

Laura and Richie spent an hour marking the places where the buckshot had penetrated the tent floor, then digging in the ground for pellets, putting each pea-sized piece of shot into pill vials, bedding them in cotton.

They worked in silence. Laura finally asked Richie why he wouldn’t ride in her car.

He sat back on his heels, looking at her as if it were self-explanatory. “It’s a Toyota.”

“What’s wrong with a Toyota?”

He shrugged.

“No. Really. What’s wrong with a Toyota? They’re the most reliable cars there are. I have a friend who owns a Camry; it’s still going strong at two hundred thousand miles.”

She saw both pity and smugness in the look he gave her.
You don’t know anything
.

She almost said something about the NASCAR race, but didn’t. Instead, she stood up and ironed out her back. Hurting again. She sat down on one of the big rocks of the fire ring, watching as Richie rolled up the tent floor. Clasped her hands around her knees, pulled them to her chest, felt the pain in her back ease. Her eyes focused downward on the dirt, the slightly charred look to it, the white and gray rock surfaces bright in the sunlight.

She dusted her hands together, feeling gritty. Placed her hands on the rocks on either side of her, straightened her back, stretching.

Richie glanced at her as he carried the tent floor up to the car, the bag containing the buckshot vials in the other hand. “You coming?”

“I’ll be along in a while.”

“Wish this thing would wind up. It’s my kid’s birthday. I don’t like being away on their birthdays.”

“I know.” Feeling weary herself.

He rubbed the back of his neck, which had a healthy sunburn—high altitude. “I’ve got a feeling about Jessup. I spent the morning asking around about him while you were at the ME’s. It’s like he disappeared into thin air. If we could find him, I’d bet he’d give us something to chew on. Oh well.” He started for his car. “See you back at the ranch.”

Laura heard his car start up, the roar startling a flock of ravens. Then he was gone and she had the lake and the campground to herself.

She closed her eyes and absorbed the good feeling of the sun on her face. Thinking about Luke Jessup disappearing. Thinking about Shana selling her horse and trailer for a good bit of cash. Thinking about Jamie Cottle and his brother. Looking out at the smooth, blue surface of the lake, wondering where T.J. Cottle dove in. Maybe there was more to the story—an argument, maybe, between teacher and pupil? She looked down at her hand, palm flat against on the big rocks. Her nails were dirty from crawling around in the dirt and picking out buckshot from the ground.

She made a mental note to ask for the file on T.J. Cottle’s death.

Looking at her nails again, her eyes straying to the crack that resulted from the juxtaposition of three big stones, a wedge of darkness that looked perfectly round.

So round she had the childlike urge to put her finger down it. Her finger would definitely fit; the hole was the size of a man’s finger. But she didn’t. There could be anything down there, specifically spiders. Having suffered the effects of a black widow bite, she sure as hell didn’t want to go there again.

She got up and headed for her car.

The layout of the Blue Lagoon Hotel and Casino was an endless labyrinth that always delivered you to the same place, or at least it
looked
like the same place. Easy to get lost, each room a cacophony of repeating chimes and pelting coins, all embedded into clockless, busily patterned areas designed to keep people there as long as their money held out. The blue-green color and shifting lights that were supposed to represent water reflections were all part of the theme, along with the repeating coconut palms on the carpet and the water slide from the third to second floor. Plenty of jungle stuff—vines hanging from the ceiling, themed restaurants like the Keel-Haul Saloon, little grass huts for the cashiers, roving cocktail servers dressed in loincloths or grass skirts, depending on their sex. Pretty girls and even prettier boys. All of it blurring together in Bobby Burdette’s mind.

Work first: Scope out the parking lots, get up on the roof. Reluctant to give up the helicopter idea, but it was looking more and more like he’d have to. It would look great in a movie, but it was problematic; there were too many ways for them to cheat. Best to do it the smart way, even if it wasn’t dramatic.

The goal was to survive. Survive and thrive.

Still, he went up on the roof—managed it quite easily. Security wasn’t what it was cracked up to be, even though he saw his share of men in suits bending into their collars and touching their earpieces.

All for show. Just like Las Vegas itself.

After the reconnaissance tour, it was time to lounge by the pool, play the slots, hit the craps table, and eat as much shrimp cocktail as he could.

He’d earned a vacation.

He managed to lose himself in the games for a couple of hours, but when he came out from under them, he thought about Shana again.

When he called her yesterday, she’d seemed distracted.

It wasn’t his imagination. She was definitely trying to get off the phone with him, making transparent excuses. He’d even mentioned that he was going to spend the following night at a brand new Las Vegas casino, knowing she’d ask if she could meet him there. But she didn’t.

“I thought you were in Kingman” was all she said.

“Nope, I’m having a mini-vacation. Don’t ask if you can come—I’m only going to be there one night.”

She didn’t say anything.

Unlike her. She always said whatever came into her empty head, which was one reason he was glad he’d never told her what he was planning. Bad enough what she
did
know.

The main reason he stayed with her was she was so hot-looking. When she went out with him, other men turned their heads to watch her. He knew they were thinking what it would be like to spend hours in the sack with a girl like that.

Plus, she had been in on this harebrained scheme from the beginning. Another good thing about her—he’d been able to let his guard down, not watch his words, at least about
that
part. But since he’d come up with his alternate plan, even that advantage had gone out the window. He had to school himself to think one way whenever he was with her—the way that led to Cottonwood Cove. Like that was the goal.

But now he sensed that something had changed between them.

He lay on a chaise, watching the parade of beautiful women modeling bikinis from Island Fashion, the hotel’s boutique. Shana would look good in one of those.

What was going on with her? She’d mentioned her brother three times.

A cocktail waitress in a grass skirt asked him if he wanted a refill. “Sure, doll,” he said, holding up his empty.

Her made-up face smoothing over into that still expression women got when they felt insulted.

Watching the water, watching the girls, but his mind on Shana. Thinking her brother’s death might have unhinged her.

How close was she to the edge?

Twenty minutes later, he was packed and standing in line waiting to check out, thinking he’d better stay close to home from now on.

Back at the motel, Laura took her second shower of the day, more to cool off on a hot, Indian-summer day than anything else, then took out her files and reviewed them, looking for anomalies—anything that might stick out. As usual, she went into a mild trance, only vaguely aware of the comings and goings outside her window. When she finished going through the murder book, it was a couple of hours later.

She went outside to stretch her legs and noticed that Richie’s car was gone. Peering into the window of his room, she spotted the motel key on the table.

People left their keys inside a room when they checked out.

She called his cell. He answered, his voice almost blotted out by wind and traffic.

“Where are you?”

“Gas station in Flag.”

“Flag? What are you doing there?”

“I’m taking the tent back to the lab.”

“In
Phoenix
?”