The Laura Cardinal Novels (58 page)

“Yeah, before they got married. I know she got pregnant just to get him to marry her.”

“I thought kids today were beyond that kind of thing.”

“Williams is a small town. Lots of white-bread people there, you know what I mean?”

“So she took this guy from you.”

“She didn’t take him. He wasn’t
mine
. She threw herself at him and he responded—what are you going to do, someone flaunts it in your face? That was the thing about Shana. Everything was a competition. She only wanted something if she couldn’t have it.”

“Did you ever meet Bobby Burdette?”

“Who?”

“A guy she’s seeing. You’ve never heard her talk about him?”

“I haven’t talked to Shana in three and a half years.”

Laura produced her list of names and numbers. “Do you know any of these girls?”

“All of them.”

“Would Shana go stay with any of them?”

Heather hunched over the book, her brows knitted together. “Maybe Jillian.”

“Jillian?”

“Jillian North. They were pretty thick, after she and I had our fight. Shana always found somebody. She went from friend to friend—like they were interchangeable. As long as she had someone to get through the day with. And when she got a boyfriend, she’d just leave you hanging.”

“Sounds like she put you through the wringer.”

“I’m not the only one. The school halls were littered with the bodies of ‘friends’ she walked over. I mean, I lasted longer than anybody else, but I’ve got eyes. She’d make friends with someone, spend all her time with them, and then she’d dump them and it was on to the next one.”

“But you think she might still be friends with this Jillian.”

Heather Olson shrugged. “Jillian lives in Tucson now, so if they were still friendly, it wouldn’t have the wear-and-tear, you know? Shana really builds you up, makes you feel like you’re the most special person ever, but after a while, it’s like she realizes you’re human and you make mistakes like everybody else.

“When she starts to see you as a real human being, you’d better watch out.”

Leaving Tickled Pink, Laura reflected that Heather Olson wasn’t over her experience with Shana Yates. She was about to try Jillian North’s number when she heard a sudden commotion next door—the screech of a wrought iron table being pushed back against the flagstones, someone saying “Give her room!”

One of the girls sitting on the ground, head down to her knees, gulping air.

Laura said to one of the mothers, “Do you need any help? I’m a police officer.”

The woman spun around. “I think we’re okay. She just needs to catch her breath—it’s happened before.”

Suddenly there was a loud
whoop
, and an ambulance glided up to the sidewalk.

Laura stepped back and watched as the paramedics approached the girl. She was now sitting on a chair. Head down, but she was nodding as they crouched beside her.

She looked familiar. It took Laura a few moments to realize where she’d met her before: Erin, Barbara Wingate’s granddaughter.

Barbara Wingate was crouched down alongside the paramedics, her face drawn with concern. Hard to believe she was a grandmother and not a mother—she fit right in with the mothers.

The woman beside Laura—blond ponytail, white Capri pants, a shell with small horizontal stripes—said something.

“I’m sorry?”

The woman looked to be in her mid-forties. The only thing that showed her age were her lips, which were tight and crimped under a cake of peach-colored lipstick. “I said, it’s a shame, but I don’t know if Erin is cut out for this. It seems like every time there’s a little excitement, it gets to her.”

Laura watched as the paramedics helped Erin to her feet and walked her toward the ambulance.

“This has happened before? Like this?”

“She’s got some kind of illness—Barbara has told us what it
isn’t
. The doctors don’t even know. Lately it’s been pretty scary—I heard she actually vomited blood. Poor thing.” She shivered. “I don’t want to sound uncharitable, but this is the third time this has happened, and it spoils—” She stopped herself. “It doesn’t spoil it, but the girls were supposed to have a good day, and then
this
happens …” She trailed off, giving up on trying to explain it, shrugging her muscled, tanned bare arms. “It’s just frustrating, that’s all.”

Barbara Wingate was talking to the paramedics outside the ambulance, the diesel engine vibrating, too loud to hear what they were saying. The planes of her face cut into sharp lines of concern, arms folded.

Finally, one of the paramedics nodded, and led Barbara around to the back. They closed the doors behind her and slowly drove away.

“Well, that’s that,” said the woman beside her.

“Are you here from Williams?”

“How’d you know that?”

“I’ve met Barbara Wingate before.”

“Oh. We’re here for the day—there’s a master class at the university. In fact it was Barb who arranged it. She knows some high muckety-muck on the board at NAU, so they invited our class. Julie!” she called. “Over here. You need money for lunch?”

A tall girl waved gracefully and toed her way through the crowd.

The woman flashed a nervous grin at Laura. “Don’t think I was being mean-spirited about Erin. She’s a nice girl and everyone really likes her, and Barb’s been fantastic. The moment just kind of got to me.” She walked over to meet her daughter.

As Laura walked back to her 4Runner, she tried the number Louise had given her for Jillian North in Tucson. An answering machine picked up. A man’s voice said that she had reached a certain number and added, “We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message …”

Smart enough not to identify themselves for potential scammers or telemarketers. Smart enough to have a man’s voice on the machine.

Laura left a message asking Jillian North to call her, hit END, and immediately punched the number in again. The answering machine came back on. The speaker sounded older, like a man in his forties or fifties, but the human voice could be deceptive.

She heard the ambulance pull out into traffic, no lights. Looked like Erin would be all right. It must be tough on a little girl, trying to get on with her life, do things that other girls did, and then have this happen.

She thought of the mother in the striped top and wondered if the rest of the mothers and the girls resented Erin’s health problems for getting in the way.

Laura found one of Dan’s roommates, Steve Banks, washing his car in the driveway of an old Craftsman bungalow fenced by a low wall made of volcanic rock. The car was small and black with a decal on the back window—Calvin urinating on the word
Dodge.

Steve Banks was a tall guy with short dark hair, wearing only a pair of long shorts and Teva sandals. His pale skin was turning pink, and even at his age, he already had a little roll over the rucked waistband of the shorts.

He talked as he sprayed the car with a hose. “I already talked to you guys.”

“Humor me.”

He sighed, turned the hose off. “I don’t know anything about what happened with Dan. We hardly saw each other.”

Laura went through the same questions Richie had asked, and some new ones of her own. “Were you here that Friday when he left?”

“No, I was at my girlfriend’s. You’ll have to talk to Brandon about that.”

Laura glanced at the notes Richie had left with her. Brandon Terry. “When can I reach him?”

“He’s around most afternoons. He has a lot of early classes this year.”

“Did Brandon say anything to you? About that day?”

“Nuh-uh.” He scratched at a white bump on his ankle—an ant bite. He looked down, saw the line of ants on the driveway, hopped backwards. “Oh, man!” Stepped onto the grass, pulling off his sandals, shook them.

Laura waited while he slipped his sandals back on. She circled her cell phone number on her card and asked him to have Brandon call her.

He was still scratching his toe when she left.

Bobby Burdette walked out of Tickled Pink and into the sunshine, but he did not feel it. He did not feel much of anything, except numbness.

He should have tended to business. Instead he’d diddled around, lounging by the pool in Vegas, coming back here, acting like the bread job was his
real
job. Like he was content to subsist by making sure Joe Blow had enough hotdog buns for his cookout. And because he didn’t prioritize, he had almost blown it.

He should have gone to see Shana first thing when he got back, but he had gotten busy. The date had been moved up, which had caught him flat-footed. He’d hit three different feed stores in three towns to get the fertilizer. Thinking that the amount of ANFO he had probably wouldn’t make a dent, but knowing if he bought more he’d have to rent a U-haul to tow on the back. That was too complicated, especially since the whole idea was
not
to use it at all.

He’d go with what he had and not worry about it.

But now Shana had taken off, and he’d missed running into that smart-ass female detective by twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes earlier, and they would have had a nice little conversation.
You looking for Shana?

Yeah, you?

Dogged bitch.

Bobby had not expected her to follow through. She was supposed to be investigating Dan Yates’s death, not looking for missing persons. But somehow, she’d connected the two. She had decided it was worth her time to go looking for Shana Yates. How far would she go? Would she drop everything and drive down to Tucson looking for Jillian North?

He had to act as if she would.

He got onto I-17 going south, a new idea already forming in his mind. By the time he got to the exit for the Wal-Mart the whole thing had crystallized. He liked the simplicity of it, how it could work with everything he already had in place.

It might even be the thing that would close the deal.

In the Wal-Mart he picked up a pick, a shovel, a sheet of plywood, some PVC pipe, a case of Dasani water, two big cartons of energy bars, and a 12-roll package of toilet paper before joining the shortest line. Which put him behind some old fart who took forever to write a check. Stocky, riddled with liver spots, a baseball cap over those dark, wrap-around sunglasses that made him think of industrial goggles.

Bobby checked his watch. Getting late. He pushed his cart up, almost edging the old guy in his Bermuda shorts.

The old guy stopping just beyond the checkout, looking at his receipt, rubbing his neck and blocking the way.

Bobby had a long way to go and a lot of stuff to do, and this old fart was—

And then,
unbelievably
, the old man tottered back to the cashier. “I just can’t let this go. I’ve been over it twice, and I have to object. You shorted me a penny.”

A
penny
?

The cashier rolled her eyes at Bobby, told the guy she would have to get someone with a key to open the cash register, they would have to go through it all again.

“That’s okay, I’m not going anywhere.”

Yeah, but I am, you stinking old fart
. Bobby reached into his pocket and found a penny. “Here,” he said with false cheeriness to the cashier. “I’ve got a penny.”

The old guy waved it away. “I don’t want a penny from
you
. I want it from them!”

Bobby thought about stuffing the penny up the old guy’s nose. Steaming, he waited while another cashier came with the key, and they went through the whole damn thing again, finally giving the old fuck his goddamned penny.

Later, he found that his rage fed into his work, and it was the easiest and fastest manual labor he had done in his whole life.

On the drive back to Williams, Laura finally reached Don North in Tucson. She introduced herself as a criminal investigator with DPS and asked him if he had a daughter named Jillian.

She could almost hear him stiffen to attention, his voice wary. “Is there something wrong?”

“No. I’m actually trying to locate a friend of hers. I was hoping she might be staying with Jillian.”

His relief was palpable. “Jillian’s in Mexico. I thought maybe something had happened.”

“I’m sorry to have given you that impression, sir. Is Shana Yates a friend of your daughter’s? I’m wondering if Shana might be with Jillian.”

“If she is, I wouldn’t know about it. But I can give you Jilly’s cell. We heard about her brother. We’ve been following it in the papers.”

“How long has Jillian been in Mexico?”

“About a week. We have a place in Rocky Point. Jilly’s been going through a rough patch and needed a place to be alone.”

Another dead end. “She wouldn’t want Shana there, then?”

“My guess is she’s probably getting lonely by now anyway. She has three brothers and sisters, so she hasn’t been alone her whole life. I could see her wanting company after a couple of days, to tell you the truth. Especially now, going through the divorce.”

Laura was amazed at the information people volunteered. “Have you ever met Shana?”

“No—I’m Jillian’s stepfather. Jilly grew up in Williams, and when her mother and I married, she stayed with her dad to finish high school. She came down here to go to the University of Arizona last year. She wants to be an architect.”

Laura tried Jillian’s number and got her voice-mail. She left a message for Jillian to call her, without identifying herself as DPS, keeping her tone neutral. Too much information might spook her. She’d be more likely to call if she was curious.

Next she called Louise Yates to see if Shana had shown up. She hadn’t, but Louise did have something to tell her. Bobby Burdette had called, looking for Shana. He didn’t know she’d taken off.

Laura wondered if Bobby could be the
reason
she took off.

On an impulse, she punched in her own number. Her answering machine picked up. For a panicked moment, she thought about hitting the END button, but she hung on for the beep. No point in hanging up anyway; she had caller ID. After listening to her own voice, she said, “Tom, I might be coming home tonight. I’ll let you know if my plans change.” Talking to empty air.