Parrot Blues (16 page)

I tried again at the McDonald's in Belen. This time it was, “Terrance, pick up the fucking phone.”

There was no answer.

10

T
ERRANCE LIVED ON
Cristobal Road in a big house in the high Heights, not far from the wind goddess's canyon in distance but below the piñon and juniper line, which placed him in another life zone. It was noon by the time we got there. Not much grew under its own power on Terrance's property, and he hadn't done anything to change that. His yard didn't have xeriscaping. It had no scaping. Terrance wasn't a man to notice what grew around him. His house had a big view—too big for me. I like looking into forever when I'm on a hike, but I'd rather think of home as a nest, not an aerie. Too much of what you see from the Heights is blowing dust. Terrance had a trophy house in the style I call California modern, an architectural statement, but of what? It looked like a curved-wall house and a flat-wall house had gotten split up somewhere and slapped together on Cristobal Road.

A white Saturn was parked in the circular driveway. The black Jaguar was not in sight. The garage door was closed.
PROTECTED BY ABC SECURITY
decals were in the windows. The brown ABC logo had the charred look of a brand. The massive front door that must have been hand carved and imported from Colonial Mexico stood ajar. The Kid carried Perigee on his shoulder, and the bird seemed to recognize his surroundings. His eyes were bright, and he gurgled happily. Maybe he was anticipating a reunion with his mate. I pushed the front door all the way open, and we stepped into the hall. “Hel-loooo,” the bird called into the long, empty corridor. I thought the sound of Perigee would bring my client running, but the only response we got was the red eye of the alarm system clicking on when it spotted us. The system tracked our path throughout the house but the alarm never sounded, or it had already sounded and rung until it ran out.

“You there, Terrance?” I yelled, but he didn't answer.

We began searching for my client. The rooms in Terrance's house were enormous, and there were plenty of them. On our right we saw a restaurant-sized stainless steel kitchen. The remains of breakfast—a glass, a mug, a bowl, a bottle of milk and a container of juice—were on the counter. Across the hall was a workout room with metal machines that resembled the skeletons of prehistoric animals. Maybe somebody rode them for exercise; I didn't believe it was Terrance Lewellen. We passed a study with a wall-to-wall entertainment center, a leather Eames chair and an ottoman. A classic red, black and white Navajo rug lay on the floor. The red light of an answering machine beeped three times. The end table was loaded with remotes. This, I figured, was where Terrance got
his
exercise.

The hall opened into a vast two-story living room. The beehive kiva fireplace was terraced with
shelves
for displaying a collector's art. Hopi kachinas danced in place on the God shelf. A large and valuable Indian pot sat in a trivet on the hearth, balanced at the angle of repose. Had it tipped one fraction of an inch farther it would have met the floor and shattered into worthless shards. Floor-to-ceiling windows faced west toward the long view, giving me the impression that if I had wings I could float from here to Mount Taylor. The window wall was the curved part of the house. The other walls were flat, and hanging on one of them was an Albert Lochover painting I hadn't seen yet, titled
Wild Flower
and consisting of purple sage and golden chamisa dancing in the wind. It was less muted than the others, marking it, I supposed, as very early or very late. The painting was large, the signature was bold, but the brush strokes were precise and delicate. The intimate feeling was appreciated in this grandiose room. I liked the brightness of
Wild Flower
myself, but I wasn't enough of an expert to know if that made it more or less valuable than the others. Had Terrance held on to it for sentimental reasons or to outfox Charlie Register? I was enough of a people expert to know that Terrance had lied to Charlie. He hadn't handed over all his Lochovers. This was one, apparently, that Charlie hadn't known about. White-on-white rectangles marked the homes of the Lochovers Charlie had known about.

An exquisite Navajo weaving made of subtle natural dyes hung on the wall next to the fireplace. I walked up close to find the line that leads out of the rug. I've heard different interpretations of this line: that it's a pathway to the gods, that the weaver puts it there as a mark of imperfection so as not to anger the gods by appearing to emulate them. Whatever the interpretation, the message is that the weavers are human, and the gods are not. I wondered if the rug would unravel if I pulled the string.

“The bird hears something,” the Kid called. He and Perigee had wandered down a hallway on the far side of the living room.

I followed. Perigee's head was cocked as he looked toward the north side of the house. I stopped to listen and heard the sound of a woman crying in the room at the end of the hall. “Deborah?” I called, but nobody answered. The bird gave a low growl; the woman continued crying.

The sound drew us down the long hallway to the master bedroom that had once been shared by Terrance and Deborah. Like the other rooms in this house, it was enormous. The eastern wall—all glass—faced the Sandias, the home of the wind goddess's mountain. It was gray rock today, shrouded in gray clouds, stern and indifferent to human fate. The wall on the north side held a king-sized bed with an elaborately carved headboard. A body was lying at one edge of the bed. It was not the body I'd been expecting to find. A woman knelt beside the bed, grieving the way a bird grieves at the loss of its mate. The body belonged to Terrance Lewellen. The woman was Sara Dumaine.

“Uh-oh,” said the Kid.

“Shit,” I said. “What happened?”

“He's dead,” Sara sobbed. “Terry's dead.”

“
He can't be,” I said. “I talked to him only a few hours ago.”

“He is,” Sara cried.

You're not supposed to touch a corpse, I know, but I couldn't believe Terrance was dead until I'd felt it myself. I put my hand to his wrist to feel for a pulse; there wasn't a flutter.

Perigee was terrified, angry or something else. It's hard to know the inner truth of a parrot's emotions; maybe he was only reacting to our reactions. The outer evidence was striking. All signs of calm and good nature vanished. His feathers fluffed up. His large wings flapped and fanned the air. His beak screeched a cacophony of abuse.

“I'll take him outside,” the Kid said.

“Good,” I replied.

“You okay here?” he asked me.

“For the moment.”

“I will be outside if you need me.”

“Thanks,” I said. “What killed him?” I asked Sara.

“I don't know,” she cried. “I got here a few minutes ago and I found him like this.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Not yet.”

“Do it,” I said. “Now. There's a phone in the study.” Terrance must have left his cell phone somewhere else; it wasn't here. I wanted Sara out of my way and out of the room. I needed a moment of peace and quiet to examine the scene and to think. Sara was stunned enough to obey my orders and give me my moment. Terrance was what people in the death business call DRT, dead right there. He lay flat on his back dressed in jeans, a short-sleeved shirt and his ostrich-hide cowboy boots. The top couple of buttons on his shirt were undone, exposing gray chest hair and a gold chain. His piece was awry, and his bare head had the startling whiteness of an underground slug. Going natural didn't make Terrance look distinguished. It made him look dead. There was no bullet hole, no mess, no blood, no sign of trauma. The only thing unusual was that his lips appeared swollen. Could Terrance have had a heart attack? I wondered. He was overweight and a type-A personality if ever I saw one. His heart could easily have the plugged arteries that would cause a coronary. But it was too easy and too convenient an explanation for me. With every sudden death, the medical examiner at least considers the possibility of homicide, and so did I. Terrance's right arm had fallen over the side of the bed and his bear claw paw was lying on the Berber carpet. There was a patch on his forearm. The testosterone it dripped wouldn't be doing him any good now. On his upper arm I saw a speck of blood. A hypodermic needle and a tiny empty vial sat on the bedside table. If this was a drug-induced death, I couldn't imagine what the drug had been, and I couldn't tell whether it had been administered by Terrance or someone else. Suicide was also a possibility a
medical
investigator would consider, but I didn't believe Terrance Lewellen was capable of it.

Sara returned. “They're on their way,” she said.

“Good,” I replied. “Did you see these?” I said, pointing to the vial and the hypodermic needle.

“Yes. They were on the floor beside his hand. I put them on the table.”

“You picked up a hypodermic needle lying next to a dead man?” Whatever fingerprints had been on the needle and vial would now be covered with Sara Dumaine's. She had tampered with evidence, which was either very dumb or moderately smart, depending on who the bottom set of fingerprints belonged to.

Sara nodded her head yes.

“Do you know what is in the vial?”

“No,” she said.

“How did you get in?” I asked her.

“I have a key.”

“And the code to deactivate the alarm?”

Sara nodded yes, buried her face in her hands and began to cry again with deep, hacking sobs. I took a good look at her. She was dressed in her trademark white: white jeans, white beaded choker, white boots, white turncoat jacket. Her blond hair was tucked up under a white baseball cap that would have looked better on a younger woman, but the dollar sign tendrils hung down. When Malinche figures in pueblo Indian ceremonials, she is always a young girl dressed in white. I wanted to pull Sara's hands away from her face and look deep into her bluebonnet eyes. She was blonder than Deborah, younger than Deborah, and she wasn't going through menopause. She was a woman who'd look good on Terrance's arm; she was also Deborah's half-sister. Her grief struck me as excessive if that's all she was. Her presence here, her key and her knowledge of the alarm system, were beyond suspicious.

“Were you sleeping with Terrance?” I asked her.

The hands fell away and gave me my opportunity to look into her eyes. Sara had made herself up carefully at some point, but it was all for nothing now, because the makeup ran down her cheeks in rivulets of brown mascara and blue eye shadow. Her blue eyes, tinged with red, were terrified.

“Where is Deborah? Did you bring her back with you?” Her voice was a whisper.

“I didn't find her. I asked you if you were sleeping with Terrance.”

She hesitated, but something—either the body in the bed or me—scared her into fessing up. “We were in love,” she said.

Love, I thought. Almost as many crimes have been committed in the name of that as in the name of religion. I wasn't sure Terrance was capable of love; capable of trophy hunting maybe, but that's not love. There's a name for what people who sleep with their sister's husbands do, but I wouldn't call that
love
either. I'd call it betrayal, and about the worst betrayal a sister, even a half-sister, can commit. I don't have a sister myself, and somewhere down the road I realized that I didn't have any women friends who had sisters either. All my women friends are only children or have brothers. We've developed our own form of sisterhood, but it's not Sara and Deborah's form. Sisters and brothers learn to compete one way. Sisters and sisters learn another. Competition can bring out the best in you, or the worst. Sisters jab more, but they forgive more. A sister listens when a brother talks about basketball. Would a sister forgive her sibling for screwing her husband? I wouldn't; I knew that.

“Deborah was so wrapped up in her parrots,” Sara said. “She traveled all the time. When she was here, she and Terry fought constantly. She was the smart and successful one. She got all the attention growing up. Nobody ever noticed me.” Sara had entered victim mind, that place where everyone has been wounded and no one is responsible. She might get away with it in court, but it didn't wash with me.

“She was your sister,” I said.

“My half-sister,” Sara replied. “I had the time to give Terry the love he needed.”

And Terrance had the money to give Sara all of what she needed, a match made of testosterone, envy and greed.

“Have you ever met Deborah?” Sara asked me. No.

“She was an only child and very spoiled until I came along. She's used to getting her way. This room is Deborah. She likes looking at mountains.”

I heard the wail of the police siren as it pulled into the driveway. The fact that the Kid was a young, Hispanic male standing in a rich Anglo's driveway would make him a suspect even though the police were likely to be young and Hispanic themselves. Of course, if he were a real suspect he would have split long ago. Would the Kid remember what I'd said about not discussing the kidnapping? Most likely. He was not a chatterbox, and he had an innate distrust of law enforcement.

“Did Deborah know you were sleeping with Terrance?” I asked Sara.

Sara shook her blond curls no. “She would have said something, believe me. Don't tell her, please.”

I'd have to find Deborah before I could tell her anything. Maybe Sara had just told me the truth. Maybe she was believing what she wanted to believe. I looked at Terrance. In death he appeared just as vulnerable as the rest of us. His corporate raider bluff was all gone. Without the cigar and the briefcase he seemed half dressed. Had he been enough of a shit to sleep with Deborah's sister and then fake Deborah's kidnapping to get her out of the way entirely? I wondered. Had Sara been in on it? In Texas they call that way of ending a relationship a Smith & Wesson divorce. They also say there that the worst thing that can happen to a man is to have an ex-wife with a mouth. A bullet is cheaper than a divorce lawyer. Could Terrance Lewellen have been working with Wes Brown? Did they fake how much they disliked each
other,
or did they dislike each other and work together anyway? Had Brown been the mastermind? Had he been the dupe? Where had
he
gone last night? That I would think such thoughts at a moment like this said something about me, something about my client. He was—like most clients—imperfect. And I—like most lawyers—have a soft spot for shits. My job, after all, is to defend them. I was pissed at Terrance for misleading me, pissed at him for dying, pissed at him for sleeping with Sara and also more than a little sad to see him go. I was downright depressed. On some level, I'd grown to like the guy. He was full of bull, but he'd been good to his bird. What made this even worse was that I felt, in a way I couldn't define, responsible. The hand behind the strings twitched, and I shivered.