Snake in the Glass (26 page)

“Did you walk the property?” Matt asked.

“Yes, a few times, mostly early in the morning. That RV could get a little claustrophobic, not to mention hot, even at this time of year, and I needed air now and then. It was kind of fun, trying to match up what I was seeing to the data I had. Not easy. Hang on . . .” Cam was staring at one of the photos. “Who’s this?”

Matt peered at the picture. “I don’t know. Do you recognize him?”

I leaned closer and saw a man standing off to one side in the picture. It looked as though he didn’t realize he was being photographed, and only part of his face was visible.

Cam said hesitantly, “I think he’s the one who picked me up at the RV.”

“Do you recognize the rocks there?”

“I think so. It’s a distinctive formation about a mile west of the RV, where I thought there’s a good chance there are gems. See that sort of double hump?” He pointed to a rock formation.

“Frank, will you take a look?” Matt pushed the picture across the table toward him.

“Sure, mate.” Frank reached for the picture and spun it around to look. “You’ve got a good eye, Cam. That formation looks right to me.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, dragging the photo back to my side of the table. “Frank, isn’t that the guy from the casino? And the Gem Show?”

Frank took the photo back. “Good on you too, Em—I think you’re right.”

Matt swiveled between us. “Fill me in. You know this guy?”

“No,” I said, “but we’ve seen him twice now—once at the Gem Show, at a booth talking with the guys who run the reservation peridot business, and again at the casino near the reservation. I think he’s a bartender at the casino.”

“You wouldn’t have a name, would you?” Matt asked us. He directed the same question to Cam, who shook his head ruefully.

“We didn’t actually talk to him either time,” I responded, “but you can find him easily enough, right?”

“Sure,” Matt said absently. Then he straightened up. “But let’s go with what we know, for the moment. I think we can assume that Alex knew the guy. This is part of a series of pictures, and they look like they were taken openly, carefully framed and all that, like he was documenting the rock formations. So as a working assumption, he could be Alex’s behind-the-scenes buyer. I’ll have to run the photo by Denis and see if he recognizes him.”

“Well, that’s progress,” I said. “We’ve confirmed that there’s somebody else involved, and we’ve got most of a face for Cam’s kidnapper, and we know you can identify him and probably track him down.” When Matt didn’t volunteer any additional information, I addressed the rest of the group. “Anybody else have any ideas?”

Frank looked as though he had swallowed a particularly tasty canary. “I might.” He paused until all eyes at the table turned to him. “A couple of things. First, I did some nosing around, talking to gem people I know, asking what the word on the street was and whether anybody was talking about something new coming along. Started with Miranda and Stewart, and they asked a friend, and so on. They came up with a name this morning, and then I had to find the guy. He admitted that he had a line on something new, but he thought it might not pan out ’cause he hadn’t heard from the seller. He’s headed back to Madagascar as soon as the show ends.”

“You have his name, and where we can find him?” Matt asked.

“I do. He’s got no problem with talking to you, as long as he makes his plane. He saw a business opportunity, but he’s got a lot of irons in the fire and he won’t be too upset if this particular deal falls through. And you may not want to hear it, but he’s got himself a pretty good alibi. He was out taking a look at the desert and tangled with a tarantula—he was sick as a dog for a couple of days and has the medical bills to prove it.”

“Where’d he find a tarantula at this time of year?” Even I knew they weren’t active in February.

“Asked a friend to show him one. Anyway, it seems kind of unlikely that this bloke was running around threatening anybody, much less killing someone.”

Damn—there went one of our favorite scenarios, the unknown buyer of the peridot as bad guy. “You said you had found out more than one thing, Frank?”

“Little thing, maybe. I’ve told you before about how peridot is mined, where you find it, and all that. But there’s more. Only members of that particular Apache tribe, and a few individual families that are descendants, are allowed to mine on the reservation.” Frank reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I got you a list of those people.”

“Let me see if I understand this,” I said. “The San Carlos Apaches have a pretty tight hold on the flow of peridot, right? That guy we talked to at the Gem Show said as much, although he put a positive spin on it. Are you thinking that one of the people or families on the list thought that maybe Alex and Denis could be a threat if they came up with a significant source of gems off reservation?”

“It’s possible,” Frank replied.

“Well, it is far-fetched, but it could be a motive, right, Matt? And oh . . .”

Matt sighed. “What, Em?”

“The use of mescaline would fit, wouldn’t it?”

“Good thought, although I’d really rather not go there. But, yes, right here in our little home town there’s the Peyote Way Church of God, which worships peyote, and one of the founders’ father came from the San Carlos Reservation. So you could say there’s a link, although there are plenty of non-Indians who use peyote, not quite legally.” He slumped in his chair. “Oh hell—you know how complicated it would be to get at someone down on the reservation, much less arrest or prosecute him? Where do you want me to start?”

I broke in before he could launch into a lecture on the history of Arizona. “Matt, let’s take the simplest case. Supposed someone from the reservation killed Alex to protect the Indian peridot industry and dumped his body in Pima County, and we have reasonable proof. What happens then?”

“Depends on how friendly the San Carlos Apache tribal police and court are feeling. Best case? The Pima County sheriff could arrest him and the case would end up in the federal court system, since murder or man-slaughter is a major crime. But if the tribe wanted to protect the guy, they could close ranks and we’d have a heck of a time prying him loose.”

We all fell silent, trying to work through the twists and turns of this new information.

I was startled by the sound of Nessa’s voice. Seated next to Frank, she had been scanning the list he had laid on the table. “Em, look at this.” She pointed to one name.

I pulled the list toward me and looked. “What? Oh, I see. Oh hell.”

“I don’t want to ask,” Matt groaned.

“Well, if you thought this was complicated before . . . There was a woman in the shop today. Nessa and I both thought she looked kind of nervous. In the end, she bought a bowl and left. She charged it, and I saw the name on the card—Beverly Harrison. Which is also on this list. Good catch, Nessa.”

“Describe her,” Cam said abruptly.

“Medium height, dark hair, nicely dressed but not fancy,” I said. “Kind of twitchy. Why?”

“Could she have been Apache?” Matt asked.

I thought. “Maybe. I wouldn’t say no.”

“I can probably pull up her driver’s license and run it by Cam. You said there was a woman involved, right?”

“Yes, I think so,” Cam said slowly. “But I won’t promise I’d recognize her, especially not from a DMV photo. If there were some way of meeting her face-to-face, maybe. But why would she come by the shop? That doesn’t make sense.”

“She did ask if it was Em’s shop,” Nessa said.

“She seemed pretty jumpy to me. Maybe she was just scoping me out. Or maybe she wanted to see if Cam had made it back all right?”

Matt stood up abruptly. “Let me make a couple of calls.” He headed for the far end of the room for privacy, his cell phone at his ear.

“Thank you, Frank,” I said quietly. “That helps.”

I cleared away what was left of our meal while Cam leafed through the printouts from Alex’s disk, with Allison leaning on his shoulder to see. I was startled when Matt came back quickly. “Your customer today, Beverly Harrison? Doesn’t live on the reservation, and she works here in Tucson, at the Indian Center.”

“Does that mean she’s Apache?”

“Not necessarily, but it makes it more likely. I expect she’ll be at the center in the morning. I can talk to her then. I think she’ll hold that long, since she doesn’t know we know who she is or why she was here. Which, I might remind you, could have been completely innocent. You did say that she bought something.”

“What about Cam and me? We can identify her, maybe connect her to some of this.”

“Remember, she hasn’t done anything wrong that we know of. I just want to ask her a few questions. You can come along if you promise to keep your mouths shut, after a yes or no on the ID. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Cam nodded in agreement.

Matt looked at me sternly. “Em, I mean it. One man is dead, and there’s a lot going on here that we don’t understand. I just want you to be safe, all right?”

While my independent side had some issues with his attitude, my romantic side was touched by his concern. I knew enough to quit while I was ahead. “Thank you. I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

Matt looked as though he wanted to say more, but we had an audience. “The Indian Center opens at eight. Why don’t I come by and pick up you two about then?”

“Fine,” I said.

Matt’s departure triggered a general exodus, as Nessa and Allison gathered up their belongings and left—delayed only by Allison’s lingering good-bye to Cam.

“I’ll give you a ride, Allison,” Cam offered, “if Em will let me use her car again.”

“You needn’t bother, Cam,” Allison said. “You must be tired.”

“I want to,” he said firmly. Allison stopped protesting.

Finally Frank and I were left to ourselves.

“I’m guessing Tucson isn’t quite what you expected, eh, Frank?”

Frank grinned. “More fun that I would have thought.”

I sighed. “I just hope Matt and his buddies wrap this up so that I can get to work and settle down. Well, I’m going to bed. Uh, Frank? I hope you didn’t have to sabotage any of your professional relationships to find out what you did.”

“No worries. Gem traders can be a secretive bunch, but I’ve made my share of friends over the years, and I know who to trust and who trusts me. Nobody’s the poorer for what they gave up, and now they’ll figure I owe them one when the time comes. It’s all good.”

“Hang on.” I waited for my brain to pop out something that had been niggling at me. “Matt didn’t seem very interested in that Madagascar dealer you talked about, right?”

“Not very, no. I gave him the name.”

“Do you think we can tell Denis? I mean, he still has a chance to salvage something from this deal, maybe get some of the money he needs, if not all. I mean, this dealer guy has no reason to hang around after the show. And Denis said he has full rights to whatever the partnership produced, so the money’s his, more or less, if the deal goes through. Let me give him a try.”

I dialed his home phone but got no answer. I didn’t want to just leave the name of the gem dealer, so I left a message for him to call me when he got in. I felt obscurely pleased with myself for having come up with one good deed—even though I didn’t particularly like Denis, and I certainly didn’t feel like I owed him anything. But if Alex had died for these stones, somebody should reap the benefits.

Frank and I had just finished tidying up and I was contemplating a last walk for the dogs when there was a brisk knock on my door. I looked through the peephole: Denis. Again. Only this time he was with his wife Elizabeth. I turned to Frank and mouthed “Denis” silently, then reluctantly opened the door.

Denis pushed past me quickly, pulling his wife behind him. “Sorry to barge in like this, Em, but I got your message and I thought it might be important.”

“So you couldn’t have called?” I stood, arms akimbo, blocking his progress.

“No, I was already out—I was picking up Elizabeth at the airport. You two have met, right?”

“Briefly.” I nodded at her. “Hi, Elizabeth. I thought you were back east, visiting your parents?”

“I was, until I heard about Alex’s death. I can’t believe he’s gone.” Elizabeth’s eyes were red—at least Alex had one person who mourned for him. “I had to come back. I assume there’ll be a funeral?”

Why was she asking me? I had no idea. “Depends on how long the authorities need the body.”

“I can’t believe anyone would want to kill Alex!”

I finally relented and backed away to let everyone into my living area. The dogs kept an eye on the newcomers. “Can I get you something to drink? Tea, coffee?”

“Coffee would be fine,” Elizabeth responded absently, sitting gingerly while trying to curl her feet under her, away from the dogs.

“It won’t be long.” I headed for my stove to boil water and was surprised when Denis followed me.

“I’m sorry, Em,” he said in a low voice. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted to tell me, and it didn’t seem right to call, but I thought it might be important. . . .”

“Denis, calm down. It’s no big deal, and I don’t see why you had to drag your wife along.”

“I don’t want to leave her alone until we figure out what’s going on. Why did you call?”

“Frank tracked down the guy who wanted to buy your stones.”

Denis’s face lit up. “Really? That’s terrific. Is he still interested?”

“Denis, you’ll have to ask Frank, but I don’t think he got down to details. But he can give you the name. He’s already given it to Matt.”

Some of the light went out of Denis’s eyes. “Oh. I hope that doesn’t put him off, if a cop comes around asking questions—I could really use the money, even part of it.”

“That’s what I figured. You can still give him a try.”

“Thank you, Em. It’s kind of you to do this, after I’ve made such a mess of things.”