A Flower in the Desert (7 page)

“I'm Joshua Croft,” I told her. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Carpenter.”

“Yes,” she said. No accent at all. The neutral, nonregional inflection of a television anchor. She smiled pertly. “Please come in.”

Six

I
FOLLOWED HER DOWN THE HALLWAY,
across a living room with a floor big enough and a ceiling high enough for a soccer match, past plush cream-colored furniture and across plush cream-colored carpeting. I didn't look around for a fax machine, and I was conscious that I wasn't looking around for a fax machine.

She stopped before an open pair of French doors and turned to me. “Mrs. Carpenter is waiting for you by the pool.” She gave me another smile and then flounced pertly away. Anxious, no doubt, to get back to her screenplay. Or put in a margin call.

I stepped through the doors and out onto a redwood deck. Up here, two glass tables, both surrounded by redwood chairs, sat beneath bright yellow parasols. To the left, across a swath of lawn so green it looked as though it had been spray painted this morning, the view of the city was spectacular. Or it would've been, if the city—and the sea, which was presumably out there, too, somewhere below the four o'clock sun—hadn't been buried beneath a blanket of smog. The stuff stretched out to the blur of horizon, sooty and yellow and somehow threatening, like a vast alien creature slumbering while it waited for feeding time.

Straight ahead, however, the view actually was spectacular. Lying on a white towel atop a redwood chaise, in front of a brilliant aquamarine swimming pool, was a slender woman. Her hair was thick and red. She wore a bikini bottom that was almost as large as a slingshot, and she wore a dark, even tan, and she wore nothing else. Her left hand was draped across her eyes, her hand hanging free, fingers limp. I admired the curve of her wrist very much. I admired all her curves, and she had quite a lot of them.

I crossed the deck, went down two steps to the lawn, and crossed that. “Mrs. Carpenter?” I said.

She moved her arm, turned her head, and slowly looked me up and down as though she were trying to guess my weight, or assess my stamina. Feline cheekbones, dark green feline eyes, a wide red mouth. “Croft?” she said.

I admitted that I was.

She nodded toward a redwood chair. “Grab a seat.”

I sat.

She was somewhere in her thirties, maybe even in her forties, but she was fighting it, and she was winning. She was in remarkable shape, so far as I could see, and just then I could see fairly far. The muscles of her thighs were long and sleek beneath the oiled brown skin, the muscles of her stomach were slightly ridged. It was a body that had seen a certain amount of exercise. All those tennis lessons, possibly.

When she sat up and swiveled slightly to her left to raise the back of the chaise, her breasts swiveled with her, too firm to be constructed entirely of human flesh. She sat back, put her arms along the arms of the chaise. Her breasts stared at me. I tried not to stare back.

She smiled. “What can I do for you?”

I smiled. Engagingly. I was developing, like everyone else in this town, a nice repertoire of smiles. “Well,” I said, “you could try putting on a shirt.”

She glanced down at her breasts, glanced back up at me. Smiled again. “Never seen tits before?”

“Once,” I said. “I haven't been the same since.”

She looked me up and down again. Maybe she was admiring my Wrangler shirt, my Levi's, my Luchese boots. She said, “You're not gay, are you?”

“Not even giddy.”

She smiled again, and then she shrugged. As her shoulders moved, her too perfect breasts slipped mechanically up and down. “What, then?”

“Mrs. Carpenter,” I said, “you're an extremely attractive woman. Obviously, you take your body seriously. I take it seriously, too. The problem is, it's a bit distracting right now. I've got this job to do. I'm supposed to ask you questions about Melissa Alonzo, and, in order to do that, I have to talk. I find it very hard to talk when my mouth is filled with drool.”

She laughed. Much as I had admired her body, I hadn't really liked the woman herself until she laughed. It was a good laugh.

She said, “Nicely done,” as though I'd passed a test of some kind. Perhaps I had. With her left hand she reached down and lifted from beside the chaise a thin white muslin blouse. As she stretched her torso to ease it over her head, more muscles slid and tightened beneath her taut brown skin.

At least an hour every day, more likely two hours, working with free weights and Nautilus both. That was the only way anyone could put together, and keep together, a body like hers.

She shook loose her thick red hair, sat back, put her arms again along the arms of the chaise. “Better?” she smiled.

Not by much. Pointed brown nipples still peered at me from beneath the loose, gauzy material. I nodded anyway. “Thanks.”

She smiled again. “You're so welcome.” Clearly, she thought I was entertaining. But that was good. That was part of my master plan.

“So,” she said. “What's this about Melissa?”

“Do you have any idea where she might be?”

She shrugged lightly. “None. Just like I told everyone else. You're working for Roy?”

“No,” I told her.

“Who?”

“Someone who's concerned about Melissa and her daughter.”

She smiled, and this time the smile was slightly sour. “Ever heard of Mary Chatsworth?”

“No.”

“A television actress. A very pretty girl. I knew her. Some psycho, a fan, hired a private detective to find out where she lived. When he got the address, he drove over to her house and shot her. He killed her.”

I said, “No one wants to shoot Melissa Alonzo.”

“How do I know that?”

“My guileless face?”

She smiled, shook her head.

I told her.

“Roy's uncle?” she said when I finished. “And he wants to know if Roy was fiddling with Winona?”

“Yes.”

“Melissa said he was. I believe her. Roy's a slime bucket.”

“But you never witnessed any molestation?”

“I would've said so in court if I had.” She smiled another sour smile. “But then again, it's not something you do in front of witnesses, is it?”

“You had contact with Melissa during the time of the trials?”

She shrugged. “A phone call now and then.”

“When was the last time you saw or heard from her?”

“Day before she left for South America.”

“In August?”

She nodded.

I asked, “You saw her or you talked to her?”

“Talked to her.”

“What was her mood like?”

“Angry. Furious. Who could blame her? The court'd just told her she had to let Roy see Winona. Unsupervised visitation. Which was the last bloody thing in the world she wanted.”

“She went off to El Salvador anyway.”

“The trip'd been arranged for months. Melissa took all that charity business very seriously. Central America. Starving refugees. Trying to save the world.” She shrugged. “She should've spent more time trying to save herself.”

“Did she suggest to you then that she might disappear when she came back?”

“No,” she said. Slowly, casually, she crossed her long legs. “Just like I told everyone else.”

I thought she was lying. I could've been wrong—I often am—but behind the overly casual movement of her legs I sensed a sudden concealed tenseness, a closing off.

“Who else asked?” I said.

“Who didn't? Roy. The police. That silly little detective Roy sent over. The group she was involved with, Sanctuary. Even the FBI. Twice.”

“An agent named Stamworth?”

She nodded. “The second time. A week or two ago. He was a long cool drink of water.” She smiled. “Or at least he thought he was. I wasn't thirsty at the time.” Her glance slid up and down my frame again, as though she were suggesting that her thirst might have increased since then.

“Stamworth talked to you recently? When, exactly?”

She shrugged. “The end of September sometime. I don't remember the exact day.”

Why had Stamworth been asking about Melissa in September? “What did he want?”

She frowned slightly. “Something to do with illegal aliens. I didn't pay much attention. I didn't care much for Stamworth. He was a jerk.”

“Is Sanctuary involved with the movement of illegal aliens?”

“They're a bit too chic for that.” She shrugged. “But I really wouldn't know. I don't pay much attention to do-gooders, either.” She smiled. “It's not my style, doing good.”

I showed her my own smile in return, the neutral one. “Did Melissa contact you when she came back to Los Angeles?”

“No.” Once again, I thought she was lying.

“How did you learn she'd disappeared?”

“Roy called me and asked me if I'd seen her. The police talked to me later. Then the rest of them. It's been a damn procession.”

“Did she contact you at any time afterward?”

“No.”

“No calls, no letters? No postcards?”

“I got a card she sent me from El Salvador. A few days after she came back. It'd been delayed in the mail, obviously. From some town called Santa Isabel. Just your basic postcard. Hello, how are you, see you soon.”

“Nothing since?”

“No.”

“Does the phrase ‘
The flower in the desert lives
' mean anything to you?”

From her reaction, I could understand why her acting career had never gotten much past the giant bugs. She concentrated, frowning, for a beat too long before she shook her head and told me, “No.”

And a good director would've told her not to pause, as she did, before she asked me, “What's
that
supposed to mean?”

“I was hoping you'd know.”

She shook her head. “No. Doesn't mean anything to me.”

“Roy Alonzo claims that Melissa instigated the sexual abuse charge because she was jealous of the woman Roy was seeing.”

Another sour smile. “Roy's full of shit. Melissa couldn't care less about that bimbo.”

“Which bimbo might that be?”

“Shana Eberle. Christ. Talk about a star-fucker.”

“You know her?”

“Everyone in town knows her.
Has
known her, in the biblical sense. She's humped everyone but Lassie.” Another smile. “And we're not really sure about Lassie. She's keeping mum.”

“You're saying Melissa isn't a jealous woman.”

“Jealous of Shana Eberle?” Amusement and scorn showed in the wide red mouth, the dark green eyes. “She thought it was a joke.”

“Is she normally a jealous woman?”

“No more than most.”

“How jealous is that?”

Her face tightened slightly in annoyance. “What's jealousy got to do with anything? She was divorced from the scumbag, the marriage was over, she was getting on with her life. And then she found out what her asshole ex-husband was doing to Winona. It tore her up. It would've torn anybody up. What Roy did to Winona was
vile.
But I can tell you one thing, she wasn't jealous of Shana Eberle.”

“All right,” I said. “She isn't a jealous woman.” But I assumed, from all the smoke Edie Carpenter was putting out, that she was. Perhaps she hadn't actually been jealous of Shana Eberle; but if she had been, I wouldn't learn about it from Edie. “What kind of woman was she?”

She frowned. “How do you mean?”

“What's she like? I don't know her, Mrs. Carpenter. I need to get some kind of a handle on her. I need to know who she is. Maybe then I can figure out where she's gone. The two of you were friends.”

“Friends, but not all that close.”

“What's she like?”

“She's a do-gooder. Your typical kindhearted cheerleader. Very sincere, very sweet, and just a teensy-weensy bit boring.”

Friends, but not all that close.

I asked, “How did you meet her?”

She smiled. A small, self-amused smile that told me she was keeping secrets, and didn't mind letting me know that she was. “At a party.”

“What kind of party?”

She shrugged. “Who can remember L.A. parties?” But the smile, although diminished now, was still there. I was supposed to guess why, apparently.

I said, “She was married to Roy at the time?”

She nodded.

“Did you ever meet her sister, Cathryn?”

She shrugged lightly, dismissively. “Once. She joined us for lunch. Mousy little thing. A librarian.”

She said this as though the single word somehow encapsulated the woman's entire life. As though it were an epitaph.

I started disliking her again. “You do know,” I said, “that she was murdered last week.”

Nodding, she said, “I read about it. This town is getting worse than Chicago in the thirties.”

“Were Cathryn and Melissa close?”

“They were sisters. They kept in touch. But close? It looked to me like Cathryn wasn't close to anyone.” Abruptly she narrowed her green eyes. “You don't think that Cathryn's getting killed has anything to do with Melissa?”

I said to her the same thing I'd said to Bradley, the homicide cop. “One sister disappears, the other's killed a few months later. It's possible there's a connection.”

She looked off for a moment, thoughtfully. For the first time I believed that what she was doing was genuine and not a performance. Then she shook her head, looked back at me. “People are getting killed in Los Angeles all the time.”

“But they're not related to Melissa Alonzo.”

“How could what happened to Cathryn have anything to do with Melissa?”

“I don't know yet. Maybe it doesn't.”

“It doesn't,” she said. “It couldn't.” I got the impression that I wasn't the only one she was trying to convince.