Desert Lost (9781615952229) (4 page)

The smile disappeared. “Apparently you've also forgotten that I'm flying back to L.A. tonight to spend a long weekend with the twins. It's their birthday. You promised you'd use the time to get things organized.”

I took care not to let my discomfort show. “Me? Get organized? I can hardly organize an apartment, let alone an entire house. What if I put the coffee pot in the toaster oven?”

My poor joke seemed to work, because his mouth curved into a smile again. “It wouldn't fit. C'mon, Lena. Let's get going before Beth thinks we've stood her up again.”

Moving was such a bitch. Packing, measurements, life changes. Fighting to quell a growing sense of panic, I followed him to his Mercedes and buckled myself in. After patting me on the shoulder much as a cowhand would soothe a nervous horse, he pulled away from the curb and turned north up Scottsdale Road.

For a long time, Scottsdale had been the toniest town in Arizona. Not anymore. Home prices in Paradise Valley—a partial misnomer since the town was as much mountain as valley—topped Scottsdale's. The higher the home, the higher the price. Warren drove west on Lincoln Drive, past big resorts hiding behind oleander hedges identical to those in south Scottsdale. The edifices behind these hedges, though, were vastly different. No storage yards, just sparkling fountains that fronted sprawling marble exteriors, cool tile lobbies, and uniformed attendants eager to cater to a guest's every need. Across the road, on the mountain north of the resorts, film and rap stars' homes dotted the slope, their designs ranging from Southwest Modern to Hollywood Horrible. After living for years in my one-bedroom apartment over Desert Investigations, I felt wildly out of place.

I felt even more so in the house Warren had leased. By Beverly Hills standards, it was small, a mere thirty-nine-hundred square feet encompassing four bedrooms, four baths, formal dining room, den, media room with stadium seating for twelve, and a pool that would have daunted Michael Phelps. The adobe-and-glass edifice perched on the south side of Mummy Mountain as if readying itself for a dive into the neighbor's swimming pool below, but I had to admit it was a stunning property. Another upside was that Warren would be there to share it with me. If he loved the house, I'd learn to love it, too.

Beth Lugar, the realtor, waited in front of the massive front door, her own clipboard at the ready. Bottle brunette and face-lifted, she was clad in a casual lilac pantsuit, the cost of which probably equaled the average person's monthly mortgage payment. As we stepped from the car, she pulled artificially plump lips away from expensive orthodontia into a grimace that vaguely resembled a smile.

“On time today, I see. Good! Let's get started. I have an appointment in Carefree at six. A nice little starter home for an adorable young couple.”

Knowing the exorbitant real estate prices in Carefree, it was all I could do not to harrumph. While she escorted us through the empty rooms, our footsteps echoed across the terrazzo tile floor and the smell of fresh paint assailed my nostrils. The house was ten years old, but rubbed and scrubbed into a sterility that unsettled me. Still, as Warren had repeatedly stressed, this was only a lease. If things didn't work out between us, then no harm, no foul.

“How's that sound to you, Lena?”

“Fine.” What had they been talking about?

Warren sighed. “I asked if you'd rather have the sofa sideways to that long glass wall or facing it.”

Shielding my eyes against the afternoon glare, I looked southwest toward the smog of downtown Phoenix. “Facing it, I guess. Why get a crick in the neck from looking sideways all the time?”

“I just thought you might prefer to face the fireplace.”

Fireplaces in the Phoenix metroplex were pointless, the weather usually being too hot. When the weather did cooperate, the county's Clean Air Initiative often kept the fires unlit. Still, hearths looked pretty filled with flowers.

“Like I said, either way's fine with me.”

Warren sighed again, then went back to measuring the wall. “Thirty-four feet, eight inches,” he called.

Beth made purring noises, mostly aimed in Warren's direction. He had that effect on women.

I turned away from the smog and looked east toward Scottsdale. In the distance, I could see the curve of the Pima Freeway where it spanned the dry Salt River. At the freeway's edge, near a narrow strip of untouched desert, lay a dark green feathering of trees and oleander bushes. Squinting, I could see the storage yard where I'd found Celeste King's body.

“Magnificent view.” Beth stood at my elbow.

“You could say that.”

“There aren't many lease-option-to-buys available with a one-eighty-degree view of the Valley.”

I said nothing, knowing that sometimes the more you see, the more you wish you didn't.

By the time Warren finished taking measurements, it was almost five, and Beth had started making polite hurry-up noises. “Get everything you need?”

He checked his clipboard again. “Looks like it. How about you, Lena? Any questions?”

“I'm fine.”

He smacked the clipboard against his muscular thigh. “That's it, then. Beth, thanks for taking the time for this. Have a safe trip to Carefree.”

She was already out the door.

***

Unlike Beth, Warren didn't seem to be in any hurry to drive away from the house. He stood at the edge of the property, looking from one hill-climbing house to another. “I can breathe here,” he said.

“That's Arizona for you.” But not for long, I worried. Too many houses dotted too many hillsides, and our famous cobalt sky had already grown yellow around the edges.

“Lena, are you happy?”

The question startled me. “Why do you ask?”

Warren turned away from the view and looked me straight in the eye. “Because you don't seem to be.”

“Occupational hazard, I guess.” At least that's what I hoped it was.

“Maybe we should…” He looked out at the hills again, and his mood—which had been darkening—seemed to shift. “Oh, hell. Let's get something to eat.”

“So early?”

“Why not? Jimmy will have closed the office by now, so there's no point in you opening it back up. Or is there something else calling out for your attention, something more important than me?”

“Don't be silly.”

“You sure?”

I bit him gently on the shoulder. “Absolutely.”

He didn't look like he believed me, but didn't press the issue. “That's good, then. So how about a nice quiet dinner at one of those new sample menu restaurants on Camelback? The
Journal
's review of Rene Marceau's place gave it three-and-a-half stars out of four. You get a little of everything, from duck comfit to sweetbreads glacée.”

A serious foodie, Warren had been taking cooking classes at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, which was one of the major reasons why the new house, with its state-of-the-art double kitchen, appealed to him. He had already bought cases of copper pots, food processors, pasta rollers, and other kitchen contraptions I couldn't identify. They looked like torture devices.

“Aren't sweetbreads sheep's stomachs or something? How about a plain old steak? Bloody rare. And a baked potato stuffed with sour cream and chives, cheese crumbles and bacon bits on top.” Real, artery-clogging food.

He tried unsuccessfully to hide his disappointment. “Okay, forget the sweetbreads. McDuffy's has good steaks. Baked potatoes, too.”

We were soon ensconced in a booth, our early arrival guaranteeing that we had our corner of the restaurant to ourselves. Service was proportionately quick, our rare steaks arriving less than ten minutes after we sat down. During a lull in the chewing, Warren said, “I meant to ask you before we got started measuring, how are things at the office? Any interesting cases lately?”

Caught off guard—had he done that on purpose?—I made the mistake of telling him about Celeste, Rosella, and the possibility that Prophet Shupe might have started a satellite compound in Scottsdale.

He put his fork down, a piece of steak still speared on the tines. “Please don't take that case.”

I pretended to be too busy cutting my own steak to answer.

“Those polygamists are dangerous, Lena. Especially Shupe and his toadies in Second Zion. They're even worse than the polygamists in Purity, and you almost got killed working
that
case.”

“Life is dangerous.”

He gave me a look. “It doesn't have to be.”

“I could get killed crossing the street. Fall off a ladder and break my neck. Have a heart attack.” Especially after eating a McDuffy's steak.

“I worry about you.”

Warren worried about me and I worried about him worrying about me. “I'll be okay, Warren.”

He stared down at his plate. “I can't believe I used to believe your job was sexy. Now it just scares me.”

Me, too, sometimes
. Eager to change the subject, I said, “Listen, I'm really sorry about acting so distracted lately. Tell you what. Leave me a key to the house, and I promise to get everything ship-shape before you get back from L.A. Dishes in cabinets, sheets on beds.”

“Your clothes in the closet?”

“And I'll leave plenty of room for yours.” Smiling, I picked up his abandoned fork and lifted it to his mouth. “Open wide, baby.”

Chapter Five

That night, after Warren left my bed to take the redeye to Los Angeles, I lay awake staring at the ceiling. As reflected lights from the cars on Scottsdale road threw horizontal stripes across the shadows, I thought about Celeste and the way she'd stared up at a sky she could no longer see.

They tell me there was a night when I, too, looked up at the stars and couldn't see them, the night my mother shot me and I almost died. I don't remember any of that, just a slow rise from blackness to a white hospital room two months later. The nurses were asking questions. Did I know my name? Did I know what had happened? Did I like the new Teddy bear the nice social worker left for me?

Slowly, over the years, a few memories had returned. A white bus, a clearing in the woods, children crying, my father's stricken face as he said goodbye. But every time, just as I was almost there, just about to grasp the missing pieces of my life, I would see my mother's horror-stricken face, hear the gunshot, and then…

Nothing.

Maybe I didn't want to remember.

***

March is an iffy month in Scottsdale. Usually the sun is out—we are in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, after all—but on occasion it goes missing in action. This morning was one of those days. As I sat looking out the window from my desk at Desert Investigations, I saw gray clouds scuttle back and forth so low to the ground it seemed I could reach right up and touch them. Even the ever-present tourists dimmed their smiles as they strolled along the art galleries along Main Street.

I was about to brew myself something hot and jittery when Sergeant Vic Falcone called and told me that a telephone tip had come in, identifying the dead woman I'd found.

I pretended surprise. “Really? Who was she?”

“The caller or the DB?” That Vic, you couldn't put anything past him. “The caller's name—a female, by the way—remains a mystery, but the DB's name is Celeste King, last known address Second Zion, in Beehive County. We're thinking she might have been mixed up with those polygamists.”

“Polygamists?”

Vic grunted. “Officially, we don't care what those people are doing as long as they stay away from Scottsdale. Anyway, Dagny reached out to the Beehive County Sheriff's Office and they're sending a couple of deputies to ask around. Not that they'll learn anything, Second Zion being what it is.”

He was right. Polygamists seldom cooperated with the police. As far as the polygamists were concerned, the only law enforcement organization that held any legal or moral weight was Prophet Shupe's God Squad, which communicated only to The Living Presence of God on Earth. Those sheriff's deputies would be lucky if they were even allowed onto the compound's grounds.

Vic's gruff voice rolled on. “We don't know what Ms. King was doing in Scottsdale, but the cause of death was six blows to the head from some wooden object. The M.E. found splinters and they might have come from a two-by-four. The first blow was fatal, but the killer kept right on swinging. You know what they say about overkill.”

“A crime of passion.”

“Especially since she was four months pregnant.”

I sat up straight. “Are you sure?”

“That's what the medical examiner says. A boy. Or would have been, except his mama died.”

“Was murdered, you mean.”

“Whatever. The M.E. took DNA samples, but you know how that goes. With the backlog over there, we'll be lucky if we get the results back by Christmas.”

Despite what we see on television cop dramas, most police departments have to wait months, or at least several weeks for DNA results. This was partially because the process itself was so slow, and partially because so many states, Arizona included, had enacted laws requiring DNA samples to be taken from anyone booked on suspicion of a felony. In this case, the DNA results should prove immaterial, the father of Celeste's baby most probably being Prophet Shupe. Sister-wives rarely fooled around on their husbands, because the sentence for a woman's adultery was death. Not by stoning—the polygamists weren't
that
fundamentalist—just a gunshot in the back of the head as Blood Atonement.

But Celeste had been beaten to death.

I thanked Vic and hung up. After a few minutes of thinking about women and the various forms of trouble they could run into, I said to Jimmy, “I'm going out for awhile. If anyone calls for me, say I'll be back in a couple of hours.”

Without taking his eyes from his computer screen, he waggled his fingers, and I walked out the door.

A chill wind blew down from the north, making me grateful I was wearing the heavy vest I'd found at Tempe Camera. Designed for photographers, it had eight pockets for various lenses and filters, but which came in handy for the tools of my own trade: disposable latex gloves, digital tape recorder, handcuffs, snub-nosed .38 revolver.

The neighborhood where I'd found Celeste's body was less than two miles from my office, so within minutes I was pulling into The RV Corral. Henny Allgood met me at the gate, her dyed red hair brighter than the oleander blossoms ringing the storage yard. Eighty if she was a day, Henny was one of those crusty old desert rats Arizona specialized in, with a rail-thin body and weathered face that had suffered through decades of droughts. Too stubborn to pay attention to the Surgeon General's warnings, she took a long drag of a Camel. Coughed. Flashed nicotine-stained dentures.

“Looks like you were right about them taggers, Lena. They didn't come back.”

“A police presence will do that for you.”

“Ha. 'Bout the only thing cops ever done for me.” Behind her, a fleet of stored RVs stretched all the way to the back fence. Winnebagos, Fleetwoods, Skylines, Monacos, the entire gas-guzzling species. The driveways of most Scottsdale homes didn't have large enough parking areas, so their owners left them with Henny when they weren't wallowing down the highway. But other RVs belonged to snowbirds, who stored them when they returned home to less scalding summers.

Henny took another drag off her cigarette. Coughed again. “Thinkin' 'bout getting me a dog. Something big and mean.”

“Like that Chihuahua you keep in your office, Pedro something or other?”

“Señor Pedro de las Cruces de las Sunnyfield Farms de las Sonora. Little shit cost me a fortune. No, not another one like him, couldn't afford it. Rottweiler, maybe. Or a pit bull.”

“Then you better make sure Mr. Big-and-Mean doesn't eat Señor Pedro de las Cruces de las whatever.”

“What you doing back here anyway, Lena? Come to deliver an invoice?” A grin.

Because of a big favor Henny had once done me, I never invoiced her for anything. “Just stopped by to ask if you've seen anything unusual lately.”

The grin disappeared as compassion flickered across her hard face. “Like a dead woman? I been reading the papers. What's this crap I hear about her being some sort of actress?”

“They know better now. Here's the thing, Henny. Have you seen any new folks in the neighborhood? New businesses that seem a bit out of place? Unusual activity, especially at night? Women in long skirts?”

“Long skirts? Make me laugh, why don't you? Women today, the skirts they wear, you can see their asses. Birth canals, even, now that underwear's gone outta style. As for unusual activity, we're zoned for light industry down here so something strange's always goin' on. Those self-storage places that have been going up all over the place, hell, you know what they're like. People driving back and forth day and night with trailers and trucks and I don't know what all. Buncha dealers in stolen goods, I'll bet. Meth cookers, too, probably. Neighborhood's gonna blow sky high some day, them with it. No loss.”

“Depends on your point of view.” Five years earlier, Henny had lost a grandson to crystal meth and she still pretended it didn't hurt.

“You ask me, Lena, you oughta do some snooping around.”

As they say, great minds think alike.

After leaving Henny to her dreams of pit bulls and Rottweilers, I walked over to the crime scene. Except for a one-inch strip of yellow crime scene tape snagged on a prickly pear cactus thorn, the area appeared to have been picked clean by locusts. Looking down the street, I studied the slight curve that made the dump spot invisible from any intersection. At what point had the killer noticed the same thing? The night of the crime, when he was driving around with the body? Or had he already been familiar with the neighborhood?

There was nothing left to do but visit other nearby businesses, so the next couple of hours found me showing Celeste's photograph around the neighborhood, asking people the same questions I'd asked Henny. The answers were in the negative until I arrived at Little Rick's You-Store-It.

The tiny office, hardly bigger than some of the storage units it fronted, was furnished in the style known as South Scottsdale Gloomy, with dark, faux-paneled walls, a faux Navajo blanket-covered sofa, and more plastic ashtrays than should have been legal. But the room looked spiffier than Little Rick himself, a middle-aged man who topped six feet and weighed a hundred pounds more than he should have. His nose and eyes were red; not an uncommon sight around here during early March. We desert rats get rheumy when the temperature drops below eighty.

Little Rick squinted at the photograph through thick bifocals. “She looks like one of those weird gals who shops at Frugal Foods, the one on Hayden Road.”

“You sure?”

He wiped his runny nose with a grungy hand. “Don't let these glasses fool you, Miss Jones. I'm a long way from being blind. Yeah, I'm sure. There's usually three of them shopping together. They…” He cleared his throat. “They look a lot alike, so I'm figuring two sisters and their mother. Or grandmother. It's getting harder and harder to tell these days, what with cosmetic surgery and all.”

“How often is ‘usually'?”

“I make my grocery run about ten on Tuesday nights, 'cause that's when you can get through checkout the fastest. That's when I see them.”

“Every week?”

“Yeah, and that's what makes it so odd about the amount of stuff they load up on, enough to feed the whole Chinese Army.”

Or an entire polygamy compound. “When's the last time you saw them?”

“Like I said, last Tuesday.”

“All three?”

“Yeah.” He wiped his nose again.

“You called them ‘weird.' Why?”

“The way they act, the way they dress. All the time in real dowdy stuff, skirts down to their ankles, big bulky sweaters just about as long as their skirts. You ain't gonna see their pictures in that magazine my wife reads,
Scottsdale Style
.”

“Have you talked to the police about this yet?”

“Couple of detectives came by yesterday, showed me a different picture. Same woman, though. I told them the same thing I'm telling you. Not that it's any of my business or anything, but I heard she was beat up something awful.” He tapped the photograph before handing it back. “Is that true? I mean, you can kinda tell she's dead here, but other than that, she doesn't look too bad. Almost pretty, actually.”

The miracles of PhotoShop. When I'd told Jimmy I planned to show the picture around, he insisted on removing the blood and inserting a lifelike highlight into Celeste's dead eyes. When further questioning of Little Rick elicited no new information, I went back to my Jeep, planning to hit Frugal Foods next Tuesday. I was running low on ramen noodles, anyway.

After a quick burger at Mickey D's, I headed back to my office, but before I arrived, my cell played the opening bars of John Lee Hooker's “Boogie Chillun.” Pulling over to take the call, I found myself listening to Rosella.

“Lena, I'm on my way to pick up another kid from one of the compounds. Feel like ridin' shotgun?”

My hands clenched on the Jeep's steering wheel as Rosella continued. “Justa couple a minutes ago I got this call from a woman up in St. George sayin' there's a girl who walked in over the ridge from Second Zion. If you come with me and the kid's not too bad off, you can question her about Prophet Shupe and any possible satellite compound down here. Maybe she's heard something.”

The small town of St. George, Utah, was separated from Second Zion, Arizona, by ten miles of sand, rock, and a state line. Sympathetic residents of the Utah town sometimes harbored compound runaways until they could be picked up by anti-polygamy organizations and delivered to safe houses in Phoenix. Considering they were a mere stone's throw from Prophet Shupe's wrath, such compassion took courage.

“Do I have time to stop by my office for a wig?” I asked Rosella. “I'm
persona non grata
around the compounds, myself.”

“Borrow one of mine. You want brunette or red?”

“Brunette. I'm on my way.”

***

When I arrived at Rosella's house, she'd donned the red wig. It made her look like a stripper. KariAnn stood next to her, carrying an overnight bag.

“The School for the Deaf and Blind's still on spring break and I don't want her stayin' here alone while we're gone, so we're droppin' her off at a friend's house,” Rosella explained.

“Aw, Mom.” Although almost blind, KariAnn, was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. But her mother worried that in our absence, Prophet Shupe might somehow find a way to reclaim what he saw as his “property.” Especially ready-to-be-bred property.

After parking my Jeep in her garage, Rosella hustled us into her aged Santa Fe, which despite its bulk, could move fast when necessary. With a final, paranoid glance out the rear view mirror, we pulled onto the street. Fortunately, Rosella's friend lived near I-17, so by one p.m., after dropping KariAnn off, we were headed north.

Traffic wasn't too bad once we passed the north Phoenix suburb of Anthem, and cleared even more at Cordes Junction, where we gassed up at the big truck stop. When we climbed in altitude—pushing eighty all the way—the desert gave way to lush pine forests and snow-capped mountains. By the time we exited I-17 just north of Flagstaff to turn onto SR-89, the slight chill we'd left behind in Phoenix had morphed into near-freezing temperatures. As the sun dipped lower in the sky, the mountains dropped behind us and we entered desert flats again. High desert, this time, even more lonely and windswept. Perfect terrain for keeping secrets.