Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (39 page)

“Natural?”

“You know, like maybe … I won’t put words to it. Cody’s too smart to get involved in something like
that
.”

“Just so we’re clear, Mrs. Sheehey, what were you worried about?”

“I dunno. Nothing sexual, don’t get me wrong about that—he had an eye for the ladies. Just filling Cody’s head with all those stories. Cody’s an only child and he got
attached
. And now look, the guy gets himself shot up at
our trailhead
, and I can’t say I’m surprised. Something going on there. Trying to impress that little gal, such a sweet little thing and all her problems. Predatory. That’s the word I’d have to use. The way he manipulated people.”

“Manipulated people?”

“Told stories.”

“Did he tell you he was a police officer in Las Vegas?”

“Yes. He also told us he was a mechanic when he was younger, worked for a NASCAR team. My car just died last week and we’re all the way out here and I called for a tow. He said let him have a crack at it and see if he could get it running. Such an
expert
.”

“Did he get it running?”

“He made it worse. All that fooling around and the engine froze up and it cost me over a thousand dollars to fix.”

She added, “The guy was bad luck all the way around.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
Home

“One shot. A .22 to the head, pointblank,” Laura told Matt.

It was almost midnight and he’d waited up for her. Too tired to do anything but sit out on the terrace and watch the full moon, she enjoyed the silence.

She enjoyed lying in his arms, too, his hand negligently touching her hair, an occasional kiss to her neck. His beating heart close.

She liked that she and Matt could be silent. But now, finally, after a little bit of space from the events of the day, she wanted to talk about it.

Matt must have read her mind. “So what do you think he was doing there?”

“Meeting someone?” Laura stared at the moon rising above the dark hump of the Rincons. A beautiful spring night. “Maybe they were going to take a moonlight hike.”

“They who?”

“We may never know.”

“I’ll bet it was a woman. Moonlight hike.”

Laura had thought this herself. She immediately came back to Madison Neville. Madison Neville, who had come out here to hide from her husband.

She’d seemed convincing. And the proprietor of the cabins, Barbara Sheehey, was convinced.

But Laura wasn’t so sure Madison wasn’t seeing Sean Perrin. She was young, beautiful, and she knew it. She was clearly aware of how her looks affected the men around her. Was she a magnet for Perrin? Could they have had a relationship?

Madison didn’t act as if she’d shot him pointblank with a .22. but you never knew. Laura had met a few female killers in her time. Often, they came off as likable people. But they cared about no one except themselves and their self-defined world.

Psychopaths.

Psychopaths were hard to spot because of their protective coloring. They looked and acted like everyone else, at least until they were unmasked.

Two people running away from their past lives…

If Perrin was running away at all.

Matt said, “What does ol’ Frank say?”

“How’d you know?”

“It’s just how you are.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Maybe it’s about the juice.”

“Juice.”

“A shot to the system,” Matt said. “Being around your old buddy, someone who … energizes you.”

“He hasn’t been around for a while.” She remembered the day, going on six years now, when she got the phone call from their lieutenant—her shock when she learned her partner had died of a heart attack. “You must think I’m nuts.”

“I do, but it’s a nice nuts,” Matt said, as he started kissing her neck in earnest.

“He asked me what
I
thought of Sean Perrin.”

“That’s as good a question as any, and I’m really interested in how you’re going to solve this case,” Matt said, capturing her hand in his. “But right now—”

“You’ve got something else on your mind,” Laura finished for him.

Turned out, what Matt had in mind was just what the doctor ordered.

Dawn. She was awakened by the smell of coffee—hazelnut, her favorite—and a noisy lapping sound. It was Jake, their black retriever, drinking.

He came in to see her, tail thumping back and forth, hitting the bed.

The window open, the sky blushing over the dark Rincons, just as the moon had looked over them last night.

Matt brought her coffee in bed.

All the assholes she’d tried to please, and here he was. Her best friend. Her lover. Her confidant. Her soul mate.

He got into bed with her and they drank coffee and read the paper. Pretty soon he’d have to head out himself—there was a load of new inventory coming in to his store on 4th Avenue. Three years ago, he and a partner—another fire fighter, bought a company called Tucson Fire Supply, which sold fire safety equipment and also held fire safety seminars.

Every second Saturday of the month 4th Avenue turned into a street fair, where people—especially kids—walked the avenue, popping in and out of the stores, restaurants, and bars, partaking from the food booths and enjoying whatever street art and street musicians who showed up. Tucson Fire Supply always did a demonstration on fire safety.

Laura hoped she’d be able to be there this weekend, but when a case was running hot and heavy, as this one was, you had only so much time to pick up the trail.

Speaking of, there was a one-column story in the Tucson & Region section of
The Arizona Daily Star
with the headline: MAN SHOT IN CAR IN MADERA CANYON. The paper said he was identified as Sean Perrin from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Matt looked over her shoulder. “Maybe that will bring the sister from out of the woodwork.”

“If she wants to be found.”

They didn’t even have a name for her.

Yet.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Liar, Liar

Laura went straight to the crime scene in Madera Canyon. It was easy to hop on the freeway from Houghton Road. She took I-10 to I-19 and exited at Continental, once a rural area with pecan orchards and now just another stuccoed-over labyrinth of sprawl.

But soon she was on the two-lane road whizzing through grassland and on into the canyon.

First thing this morning Laura received a text from Alex Williams, Madison Neville’s friend, corroborating that Madison had indeed stayed overnight with her in Continental. Barbara Sheehey’s movements were accounted for by her son Cody, and vice-versa.

She arrived at seven-thirty a.m., glad to see there were two more cars in the lot, outside Cabin 1 and Cabin 4. Madison’s hatchback was also there.

One couple was already sitting on the porch in front of their cabin, drinking coffee and reading the paper.

The morning was still chilly, but they were a rugged pair in their khaki trousers, Madera Canyon tees, jackets, heavy socks, and hiking boots. Laura pegged them to be in their late sixties to early seventies. The aroma of coffee overwhelmed the smells of the canyon.

Lloyd and June Dickinson. Retired college professors from New England. That was what Laura knew about them going in.

They offered her coffee and they sat and talked desultorily for a while, watching the ash-gray mountain across the way take on color. Little by little the sun made inroads, like runnels of flame through the grass, like sparks torching the oak trees. The birds singing. Squirrels scampering up and down tree trunks.

Lloyd told her they made dinner, sat outside with a glass of wine or two, watched some television, then went to bed. This corroborated what Barbara Sheehey had told her about their habits. Sheehey had recalled seeing their SUV parked out front, and heard their television going.

Laura asked them if they heard any cars going in and out.

“I think so,” June said. “But cars are always going in and out around here.”

On the subject of Sean Perrin, what Laura got from Lloyd was skepticism, and from June outright hostility.

“He gave me the creeps,” she said.

“In what way?”

“Every one you can think of. Self-aggrandizing. A liar. Lied to my face. Lied to
his
face.” She tapped her husband’s shoulder.

Lloyd shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, June.”

“Oh, pish! He told us about a new place backside of the mountain, great birding, and we were lost half the day. And no birds! The man boasted about everything.”

Laura took notes. She did it the old-fashioned way, a small spiral notebook and a pen. She’d look at them later and half of what she’d written wouldn’t make sense. That was because, as June Dickinson said, her voice dripping with irony, Perrin was such a
Renaissance Man
.

“He went on and on about his life list. It was clear he didn’t know the first damn thing about birds. Oh, he was impressive, the way he spewed numbers and places and species—not that he knew the first thing about them. But if you didn’t know anything, you’d believe him. He sounded convincing. You’d think he wouldn’t try to snow
us
, people who know what we’re talking about, but he seemed to zero in on our weakest points, the birds and areas we haven’t concentrated on. Like he had a sixth sense how to … make up tall tales.”

“He talked a good game,” Lloyd agreed. “It was amazing watching him work. I’ve known a few liars in my time, but he was the prize pumpkin at the fair.”

Laura wrote down “Congenital liar” with a question mark.

Added, “Pathological?”

She asked them what he had told them about his stay here, if he had told them anything about his life in Las Vegas.

“He must think old is dumb, because he thought he could tell us anything he wanted and get away with it,” June said. “I didn’t believe a word he said.”

Laura ended up scribbling. She could barely read her own writing—it turned into a list.

Later, when she went to her car she looked at it again, in complete awe of the depth and breadth of the man’s accomplishments, scribbled in her cramped handwriting. She had to write fast, wished she’d learned cursive instead of these crummy block letters.

Birder

House builder – ‘master craftsman’

Kicked out of MGM Grand (Vegas) for breaking the bank

Wife – fashion model

The mob was after him – ‘whistleblower’ - they cooked the books

On the run (If lying low, why boast?)

Stunt pilot

Yes,
stunt pilot
. He claimed he performed on the air show circuit until a hurricane destroyed his plane and he decided it was a sign from God.

But the kicker? He’d served in Special Forces. SEAL Team 6.

Of course
.

“Did he shoot Osama bin Laden?” Laura had asked June Dickinson.

“Nope,” June said drily. “Although he might as well join the crowd.”

Laura liked the woman.

“Did you believe anything at all?”

“Somebody shot him, so I believe
that
.”