Kissing Arizona (28 page)

‘My clever Genius Geek did a back-trace on Frank Cooper's phone,' Sarah said, ‘and read the GPS chip in that snazzy red Porsche he's been driving to Phoenix every week, and I do believe he found me Laura Hughes.'

‘Aw come on, Sarah,' Leo said. ‘Not fair you get Tasty Toes and I'm stuck with the bookkeeper.'

‘Well, see, I left a message on her phone that said, “If you are Tasty Toes I need to talk to you urgently.” And she called me back just now, in the sweetest voice you could possibly imagine, and said, “I can make time today if you can come right away.”

‘You two talking in code or what?' Delaney said.

‘Will you tell him about the emails?' Sarah said. ‘It's already nine o'clock and the radio says northbound on I-10 is backed up a mile at Picacho Peak.'

The apartment was on the third floor of a four-story building on Cave Creek Road, in a row of buildings just like it. Not a slum, but more workaday than upscale. Well-worn terrazzo in the hall, and a light out in the elevator. Frank Cooper didn't spend all of that big weekly draw on this place, Sarah thought as she rang the bell.

When the cover slid aside on the security viewer she held her shield up by her cheek. The deadbolt clicked and the door was opened by a late-thirties vanilla pudding of a woman who could not possibly be Tasty Toes. Round white arms and the beginnings of a double chin, a big ba-zoom busting out of a V-necked print dress in a harmless shade of blue.
In twenty years she's going to look just like Lois Cooper.
Sarah had been expecting a sizzling blond. This woman had light-brown hair in a short pageboy cut with a couple of light streaks in front.

‘Sarah Burke,' Sarah said, putting her hand out.

‘Laura Hughes.' She shook hands and opened the door wider, smiling. ‘Come in.' Sarah walked into the kind of living space she thought of as Classic Blah-blah – a lot of beige, a lot of glass. Fat couches grouped around a flat-screen TV and a couple of large predictable prints, an R.C. Gorman and a collection of pots. In the background, a round glass table and four hunter-green painted ladder-back chairs under a light. It all looked recently assembled by a beginner taking no chances. The view through the big windows was roaring traffic in the foreground, desert in the distance.

Sarah put her shield back on her belt and settled her jacket with a shrug. Her service weapon was out of sight in an ankle holster and she'd left the taser at home. She said, ‘Thank you for making time for me.'

‘Cancelling lunch was no problem. I do have to go to work in two hours, though.' She indicated two facing chairs by a window and they sat.

‘That should be plenty of time. Where do you work, by the way?'

‘In the lingerie department at Macy's. The one in Biltmore Fashion Park. I'm only getting about thirty hours a week right now because things are slow in retail, as I'm sure you've heard.'

‘In everything, I guess. Except law enforcement – we're busy.'

‘I suppose. People have to live, don't they? Right now I'm working three to nine, five days a week, and split days off, how's that for a rotten schedule? But I took it because one of the days off is Sunday, and I wanted that day with Frank.' She smiled again, an easy smile that shaded a little toward smug. ‘That's what you want to talk about, isn't it? My friendship with Frank?'

‘Yes, please.'
What's the use having an interrogation technique if the persons of interest tell everything without being asked?
‘How long have you known him?'

‘Since last December.'

So we found the first emails.
‘How did you meet him?'

‘Right there in the store. He came in to buy a gift for somebody. Men always find it hard to say what they want in lingerie, but it's no problem for us because they always want the same thing: something skimpy and very feminine, you know, the sexier the better.'

‘I suppose that's true,' Sarah said. Her husband had been a restaurateur whose gifts had been mostly high-end cookwear. On the rare occasions when Dietz got to see her underwear, all he seemed to care about was how fast he could get her out of it.

‘I mean they're not going to buy the white cotton sports bras, are they? A man comes into my part of the store, he's looking for a gift that's going to please a woman first and him later on.' She rolled her shoulders and laughed a throaty laugh. ‘Hopefully not too much later on.'

‘Well, Frank was in his fifties and you never know, so I showed him a couple of nice nighties. I could tell by the way he looked at them that he wanted something racier. So I brought out some teddies, expensive little wisps of things in silk and satin with a lot of lace, and right away he got interested. He took some time deciding on the right size, asking me, in the very nicest way, very polite, if I would hold them up to myself so he could judge. I finally got him to settle on the pale rose silk one in my size but the long-torso option. I was putting it in the box, getting ready to wrap it up, when he started to look, you know . . . kind of thoughtful.

‘I said, “Now you look as if there might be something else, what is it?” thinking, maybe some perfume. But he said, “I was just thinking how nice a garment like that would look on you.”' Laura's voice broke on the last two words and big tears ran down her cheeks and onto her hands. She grabbed tissues out of a box beside her, wiped her face noisily and thoroughly, cleared her throat and said, ‘Sorry.'

‘I know this is hard,' Sarah said. The usual police formula – ‘I'm sorry for your loss' – didn't seem quite appropriate, although now that she saw this surprising woman's obviously genuine sorrow, she thought, Why not? Grief is grief. ‘I'm sorry for your loss.'

‘Thank you. And thank you for not being a, you know,
prude
. One of the hardest things, when you're just the girlfriend, is you don't get any sympathy. Hardly anybody knew I was involved with Frank, he asked me to be discreet and I was. But even the ones who knew I was dating him, my girlfriend and my sister and like that, they just figured I was in it for the extra money and good times, so except for the inconvenience what's to be sad about? But really, it wasn't . . . well.' She recrossed her legs, blew her nose. ‘OK, maybe it did start out like that. I got propositioned in an underwear store by a man who was obviously buying a present for his girlfriend, not his wife, so yes, in the beginning it was maybe a little crass.'

‘His girlfriend. Would that be the one he called Cheeks, do you know?' Sarah thought the nickname might evoke scorn or jealousy, but Laura didn't bat an eye.

‘Hey, it beats me what he called her. Seems like we never got around to talking about that.' That sensuous little chuckle again – this woman liked to stick it right in your face. ‘When he asked me to dinner I knew it wasn't just to talk about the retail climate in Phoenix –' she wound a curl around her finger – ‘although I thought it was pretty sweet of him to put a little gloss on it like that.' She blew her nose again and asked, ‘Would you like a soda or something? I feel kind of thirsty.'

‘Glass of water would be nice.' While Laura was fetching the drinks Sarah took a quick look at her checklist, where none of the items had as yet been crossed off. ‘Money,' she read, ‘LadySmith, Anger, Suicide?'
Better move this along.

Laura came back, put down two coasters and then two glasses of water with plenty of ice. Sarah took the big paper napkin she offered and said, ‘OK, so it started out as standard sexual high-jinks but grew into real affection, is that fair to say?' Laura nodded emphatically, looking grateful.

‘It's such a relief that you're understanding. Some people still get pretty puritanical about extramarital sex. Which is pretty dumb, isn't it? If it's such a bad thing how come there's so much of it going on all the time?'

‘That's a very good question,' Sarah said.

‘Isn't it? Frank and I were just incredibly well-matched. From the very first time, we hit it off in bed like gangbusters, we liked all the same things.' She chuckled, remembering. ‘Most guys are a little too . . . reticent for my taste. I mean, you're there to have fun, why hold anything back? Frank felt the same way, so we got totally nuts about each other in a short time, couldn't get enough. And after all we weren't hurting anybody. I never expected him to give up his wife and family. I understood he had obligations in Tucson and I had no intention of interfering with any of that. I didn't even care about the other girlfriend. He started, once, to make promises about giving her up and I said, “You do as you please about that. All I care is if we do plenty of
this
,” and I put my hand on him and right there, standing up, we did it again.'

She wiped her eyes again and said, ‘I'm just going to have a dickens of a time getting over missing him. My old Poops.'

Sarah said, ‘Did you know he wanted to kill his wife?'

‘What? I certainly did not. And I don't believe he did. Frank had great respect for his wife, he said she was a real partner. She just didn't, you know,
put out
for him any more. And he wasn't the type to go without.'

‘Was he the type to commit suicide?'

‘Are you kidding? I don't know who dreamed up that scenario, but it's way, way off the mark. Why would Frank kill himself? He had everything he wanted, and I'm here to tell you he knew how to enjoy it.'

‘I hear you.'
You're too banal not to believe.
‘And how long had you known him when he gave you the gun?'

Laura looked puzzled. ‘What gun?'

‘The Smith & Wessen LadySmith, model 60 LS.'
Batter them with
information, make them think you know all their secrets.

But Laura Hughes just stared at her and said, ‘Honey, Frank never gave me a gun. Whatever gave you that idea?'

Mostly the fact that I know he gave it to somebody and I was hoping it was you.
But looking into Laura's astonished blue eyes, Sarah could see she didn't have it. ‘He never offered you a gun?'

‘Actually, except for some Sunday afternoons I'm going to remember for the rest of my life, Frank never gave me a whole lot,' Laura said. ‘I know everybody's going to think I got tons of loot, but I didn't. Well, a mink jacket, last Christmas. Craziest, most impractical – the mink season in Phoenix is maybe two weeks in January. But he was trying to impress me then, show me what a big man he was.' She shook her head, ruminating fondly about Frank's foibles. ‘Like I didn't know who he was. Clarice there in the store told me that first day, “That's Frank Cooper from Cooper's Home Stores. They say he's building a new store up here. Be nice to him, maybe he'll hire you to manage it.” She snickered in that mean way she has, like that was the most unlikely thing she could possibly imagine. I have so been looking forward to telling her that's exactly what I'm going to do.'

‘Manage the new store, you mean?'

‘That's right.' She sighed. ‘I mean, it
was
right. I guess it's never going to happen now. Even if the family went ahead with the plans they wouldn't hire
me
.'

‘Do you think it was a firm offer?'

‘Oh, you bet. Not that I'll, you know, sue or anything. But I could make plenty of trouble for the Coopers if I wanted to. I mean, I've got a signed contract.' She winked. ‘Everybody thinks I'm such a bimbo. But I've got a good head for business and I know how to take care of myself.'

‘I see that. Was Frank paying for this apartment?'

‘Heck, no. I was living here when I met him. I have some money from the divorce settlement from my second husband. Frank helped me with some upgrades from the store – this carpet, the bedroom furniture.'

‘OK. But if Frank wasn't spending money on you, why was he drawing so much every weekend?'

‘Oh, well . . .' Laura did some evasive head-tosses and considered her fingernails briefly. ‘I didn't say he didn't spend it here. Frank liked to party. But he was a man with a lot of responsibilities, so mostly he liked the kind of a party where he could control everything.'

‘And that costs more?'

‘Of course . . . oh, well!' She jumped up. ‘Come on, I'll show you.' She waved her plump arms toward the hall. Sarah followed the sway of Laura's round behind past a standard kitchen off the dining area. Down the hall, a bathroom where the only luxury items in sight were a large square tub and a great many fluffy white towels on racks. At the door to her bedroom she paused and said, ‘I hope you're not easily shocked.'

‘I'm a homicide detective, Laura.'

‘Yes, well – OK, come on in.'

The Hugh Hefner school of design. Why did she think I'd be shocked? This is really a cliché.
There were mirrors on the ceiling, of course. An honest-to-god round bed, with red velvet covers and draperies, and pink satin sheets. A closet full of lacy little nothings for her and silk bathrobes for him. The biggest flat-screen TV in the known world, mounted on the wall above a console stuffed full of pornographic movies. Sex toys in a cupboard. Laura showed it all off proudly, saying, ‘Everything for pleasure.'

Sarah could almost hear Leo getting ready to slaver. ‘I see the roach,' Sarah said. ‘But no champagne?'

‘Frank didn't like to drink much. He said it dulled the senses.' A quick little flick of the eyelids. ‘He liked his ciggies, though. That's what he called dope, “my ciggies.” I always had to keep a nice fresh supply of Mexican weed. I guess I can count on you not to get stuffy about
that
, can't I?'