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“Well, what if he didn’t do it?”
“Ah, a who-done-it.” He said each word carefully. “Maybe it’s one of those serial killers that seem drawn to our fine city. Maybe the two victims shared some hidden connection.”
“I’m not after Sherlock Holmes, Bobby,” I said sharply. “You know things and hear things. Hell, you do things.”
“Oh, David, please. Sheriff Peralta fills you with fantasies and half-truths. Look out that window. That’s where the money is made. In real estate, building, retailing, and tourism. Why would I need to break the law?”
“I thought you were a venture capitalist. Now you’re a developer? Better find a story and stick to it.”
“Alas, the Phoenix economy is not what the chamber of commerce types claim,” he said. “All my VC investments are in California and Austin. Phoenix is not exactly on the cutting edge. So as a businessman here, of course I invest in real estate. Everybody does. It’s the only economy we have. Someday the bubble will burst, of course. Then I will move into Treasuries.”
I gave an exaggerated yawn, even though my forearm hurt like hell when I raised it. Nasty things, saps.
Bobby said, “I’ve heard the Samoans from LA are trying to move in on the meth trade here. Think of it as a maturing industry with many scattered players that is attracting takeover artists. But they don’t seem like the ice pick types to me. The check-cashing outlets? Some are compromised with the smuggling trade, which is an international, well-capitalized operation. That might be a more profitable avenue for you.”
“How so?”
He shrugged. “My suspicions as a civilian would probably be useless to you, History Shamus. It does strain my credulity to believe this young man, Esparza, walked into a crowded casino and killed the man for his wallet. What was his name? Bell?” He leaned toward me. “How is your book coming?”
“It’s coming,” I said.
“I wonder if I’ll be in it?” he chirped. “I wonder if Miss Gretchen will be there? She certainly had edge, as they say.”
I tried to ignore him. “What do you know about Tom Earley?” I asked.
His thin lips stretched into an icy smile. “A slick character, I think,” Bobby said.
I just waited, watching jets in the distance land at Sky Harbor. Only four days until Lindsey came home.
Finally, Bobby said, “Mr. Earley is deep into our two growth industries: real estate and conservative politics. All I know is what I read in the papers, as Walter Winchell said.”
“Will Rogers,” I corrected. “Ever met Earley?”
“Once, at a fundraiser for Barrow Neurological Institute. It was at the Phoenician, as I recall. He had his wife with him. A pretty woman with red hair. Do you know them? Are they connected with your murders?”
“Thanks for your help, Bobby,” I said, rising to leave. “If you hear anything…”
He nodded, and rose to shake my hand.
“David,” he said, “you have a tendency to over-think things. Sometimes there’s not an elaborate plot or cosmic evil at work. Sometimes it’s just simple, feral greed.”
My feet had crossed a hundred thousand dollars in Persian rugs when his voice came again. “Why were you at El Pedregal? You don’t strike me as the resort type.”
I turned to face him. “I was meeting someone.”
“Ah,” he said. I left it at that.
21
For a place in the desert, my town sure had a lot of deep ends. One day, I was just another guy with a Ph.D. and a badge writing a book. The next, I was defying the sheriff’s direct orders, going to meet my mystery soccer mom, who happened to be married to a powerful politician who would like nothing better than to see me pulling espresso shots at Starbucks. Only she doesn’t show up, and I was the china shop for a bull with a taste for old-time gangland hardware. I was in over my head. Why stop there, Mapstone? Keep going. If you really work hard, you can be unemployed by the time Lindsey gets back from Washington.
That knowledge hadn’t kept me from making two trips to Gilbert over the weekend. The house looked deserted. I didn’t even hear from the Rottweilers. Finally, I went next door, where a smooth-faced man yielded to my badge-based way of making friends and influencing people. He told me the Earleys had left for Europe on vacation. Was anything wrong?, he asked. More than you know. Was there any way he could help?, he asked. No, and I’m sorry to disappoint
the neighborhood gossips. Just think of me as collecting for the sheriff’s DARE program. Or think nothing at all. I was thinking too much, as Bobby noted. Dana lured me into a trap. That’s what my gut said. Or had the blackmailer been real, and somehow either scared her off or…? She had definitely left for the airport Saturday morning, the morning after the episode in the glass shop. The neighbor had seen her with her husband and children, getting in the SUV.
I spent the rest of Monday in my courthouse garret. Yet somehow the pages I had written seemed stale. Duke Ellington through the headphones failed to comfort me. The archives that I had carefully laid out on the big counsel’s table looked at me with disinterest. I wrote two pages over and over on the Macintosh; the process lacked even the bathos of filling wastebaskets with wadded-up paper sheets, as I had in grad school. Eventually, I closed up shop, grabbed a burrito at Ramiro’s, and went home. The only thing to show for the day was Lindsey’s goodnight call.
The next day, I rode the bus downtown, checked out an unmarked Crown Vic and took a road trip. It wasn’t the kind of trip most people took willingly. I stopped at a Circle K to buy several bottles of water and put them on ice in a small ice chest. I was going to a place that was about as close to Yuma County as you could get and still be under the jurisdiction of Mike Peralta, and I was doing it on the first day of summer. It couldn’t even be reached directly. So I took Interstate 10 south to Casa Grande and headed west on I-8. Seemingly everywhere but the Indian reservation there was new framing for subdivisions. Where were these people going to work? All building, selling, furnishing, servicing, and financing new housing, I supposed. Where was the water going to come from? This part of the state was using more groundwater than was being replenished. Nobody seemed to want to talk about that one. Most of the newcomers didn’t even know where their water came from—in their civilized minds, the answer was the water tap, of course! On I-8, the subdivisions fell behind, replaced by cotton fields, then empty desert. Follow the interstate far enough and you ended up in San Diego. I had lived a very different life there long ago. I didn’t think of it often now. I missed the pleasant weather.
