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All those possibilities stuck in the bruised places in my heart like slowly turning screws.
I couldn’t go to the school, or to the Erland home—at least, not without an excuse, and I hadn’t thought of one yet. I’d take a spin through the cemetery, though, I decided, on my way to Wal-Mart.
My cell phone jingled inside my purse as I was pulling onto the 101, heading south. I upended the bag and fumbled for the phone, afraid to take my eyes off the road. Arizona drivers, I’ve gotta tell ya, are stone-crazy. Maybe it’s the serotonin, from all that sunlight. Seasonal affective disorder in reverse. Maybe it’s the flat, straight roads. Whatever it is, most of them drive like maniacs, and last time I checked Phoenix was the number one city in the country for red-light fatalities.
“Hello?” I said, swerving to avoid a white Expedition crossing in front of me to make a last-moment exit. “Tucker?”
I hadn’t dared to glance at the caller ID panel before I answered; even a split second could have meant months in traction, and I don’t have that kind of spare time.
“Sorry,” Jolie said. “It’s only your sister. You know, the black one?”
I was glad to hear her voice. “Yeah,” I replied, grinning. “I remember. What’s up?”
“I’m on the job,” Jolie answered, and from the change in her tone I figured she must have cupped the phone with one hand, hoping her voice wouldn’t carry. For Jolie, “on the job” probably meant she was standing over a body. “Moje, this is bad.”
“What?” I asked, navigating the road leading to the cemetery. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up checking in for good, and the adrenaline rush brought on by Jolie’s words wasn’t helping.
“I can’t talk long,” Jolie said, hush-hush. “The short version is I’m standing in the desert about twenty yards from a corpse, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s Alex Pennington’s.”
The Volvo’s tires squealed as I wrenched the car off the road, came to a stop in a restaurant parking lot. I was shaking. “No!”
“Yes,” Jolie replied with a sigh. “The uniforms are here, and homicide is on its way. But it’s Alex, all right. I’d know that asshole anywhere.”
“Who found him? How was he killed?”
“Gotta go,” Jolie chimed, and hung up.
Something Greer had said the night before stung my brain. For all I know, he’s lying dead in the desert somewhere.
“Shit,” I said to my empty car.
She couldn’t have done it. She couldn’t have killed Alex. The Greer I knew, while self-absorbed and famously high maintenance, simply wasn’t capable of that.
I shook off the agitation and switched the dial to damage control.
How was I going to break news like this to Greer? Even though she’d hired me to get the goods on Pennington, I knew she loved the guy, even hoped to have a family with him, which was why I didn’t seriously entertain the notion that she might have killed him. I also knew she was still hoping he’d come out pure on the other end of my investigation. Instead, he’d come out dead.
A new and even more alarming thought elbowed its way to the forefront of my mind. What if he haunted me?
Goose bumps sprouted on my forearms, and even though it was a hundred degrees outside, I felt as though I’d just stepped into a meat locker.
I did some deep breathing—Damn Fool’s Guide to Relieving Stress—and waited until the shaking subsided.
What to do?
Motor back to Greer’s and wait, pretending I didn’t know Alex was a goner, until the police called or dropped by to tell her what had happened?
For one thing, I couldn’t pretend that well. For another, Greer probably wasn’t home. Even though she had a cast on her left arm, she attended her yoga class faithfully every morning, had lunch out and then went shopping.
When I was steady enough, I drove back out onto the street and went on to the cemetery. I could call Greer on her cell phone, but what would I say? A body’s been found in the desert and Jolie is ninety-nine percent sure it’s Alex?
What if it wasn’t Alex? Okay, it was almost a sure thing, but there was that one-percent factor.
I bit my lip. Drove through the cemetery gates.
The old lady was there, still fiddling with her flowers.
But there was no sign of Gillian.
Half-relieved, I turned around and fixed my internal GPS on Wal-Mart.
Cell phones were a no-no in yoga class, which meant I wouldn’t be able to get through to Greer anyway, and I still didn’t know what I’d say if I did.
The parking lot at Wally World was crowded.
I wedged the Volvo in between a tangle of shopping carts and an old car with a Confederate-flag sunscreen, and sprinted for the entrance. I was in no particular hurry, though, since I had almost two hours before my lunch date with Beverly Pennington, and I was probably going to break that, anyway.
After all, she’d been married to Alex, and they had several grown children. However acrimonious the divorce had been, she was in for a shock. I didn’t want to be there when she got the news.
I took a cart, wheeled into the store. Two old guys in blue vests welcomed me to Wal-Mart. One of them was dead, but he seemed happy enough.
I guess there are worse ways to spend eternity.
I headed for the children’s section, picked out two pairs of jean shorts and two T-shirts that looked as though they’d fit Gillian, along with some tiny white sneakers. Then it was on to the toy department, where I chose a blackboard and a box of colored chalk.
The whole thing took under fifteen minutes, which left me with a serious gap in my schedule. I paid and left the store with my purchases.
Gillian was sitting in the front seat of my car when I got back.
“Look,” I said, holding up a blue plastic bag. “I bought you a change of clothes.”
She gave me a piteous glance, turned in the seat and wrote “MOM” in the dust on my dashboard with the tip of one finger.
I got the blackboard out of its cardboard box and handed it to Gillian, along with the chalk.
She blinked, looked at me curiously, then extracted a pink stick of chalk from the box and wrote “MOM” again.
I sighed, got into the car and fastened my seat belt. Started the engine. Alarming thought number seventy-two struck in the next instant. I took Gillian’s chin in my hand, turned her to face me.
“Was your mom the one?” I asked slowly. “The one who hurt you, I mean?”
Gillian’s eyes widened, and she shook her head.
“Do you know where she is now?”
She rubbed out “MOM” and replaced it with “WURK.”
Work? Helen Erland was at work, the day after her child’s funeral, selling cigarettes and auto air fresheners and propane tanks for people’s barbecue grills? “Why didn’t you just pop in on her, the way you do with me?”
Gillian’s chest moved with a silent sigh.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take you there. But she still won’t be able to see you, Gillian. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Gillian nodded. Erased “WURK” and wrote “DOG.”
“No dog,” I said without conviction.
Gillian underlined the word with a slashing motion of her hand and looked stubborn.
“We’ll see,” I told her.
We headed for Cave Creek, and sure enough, her mother was behind the counter at the convenience store, wearing a pink cotton smock with a company logo on the pocket. She looked wrecked—her eyes were puffy and swollen from crying, and she hadn’t bothered with the usual heavy makeup. She seemed younger without it. Her hair, blond like Gillian’s, was pulled back into a ponytail, and even though she was pale, there was a tragic prettiness about her.
I bought a forty-four-ounce diet cola, feeling nervous, while Gillian stared at her mother with a longing that made me ache at a cellular level.
“You were at Gillian’s funeral,” Helen said, blinking as though she was just coming out of a stupor. “I saw you.”
I nodded. Put out my free hand. “Mojo Sheepshanks,” I said. “I come into the store sometimes. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Erland—about Gillian.”
She blinked. Retreated into herself a little. I’d seen the expression before; any moment now, the blinds would be pulled and the lights would go out. “You’re the one who was on TV.”
“Yes,” I answered.
“You’re a detective,” she mused.
“A private investigator,” I clarified.
She leaned partway across the counter and spoke in a low voice. “My husband did not kill our daughter,” she said. “Vince would never have hurt Gillian.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.
Fresh tears sprang to Helen Erland’s eyes. “The police think Vince is guilty,” she whispered desperately. “They’re not even looking for the real murderer!”
I thought of Tucker. Whatever our differences, I knew he was a good cop. He’d be looking for the killer, all right. I let the remark pass, since I wasn’t there to argue. “I know you must have been asked this question over and over again, until you wanted to scream,” I said gently. “But do you have any idea who might have done such a thing? Besides your husband, I mean.”
She sniffled, snatched a handful of tissues from a box behind the counter and swabbed her face. Her skin looked raw, as though she’d tried to scrub it away. “It must have been a drifter, someone like that,” she said. “Nobody who knew Gillian would want to hurt her.” There was a short pause. “She was such a brave little thing. She couldn’t hear, you know, or speak, except in sign language. But she did everything the other kids did—even ballet. She told me she could feel the music, coming up through the floor.”
I swallowed. I could have used a handful of tissues myself just about then.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“Everybody’s ‘sorry,’” Helen Erland replied, almost scoffing. “That won’t bring her back.”
I nodded, looked away, blinked rapidly until my vision cleared. “I wish there was some way I could help,” I said, thinking aloud.
“I work in a cash-and-dash,” Mrs. Erland said, peering at me from beneath an overhead cigarette rack on my side of the counter. “I can’t pay you much, but if you want to help—if you weren’t just saying that—there is something you can do. You can find out who killed my baby girl.”
I felt Gillian’s hand creep into mine, and gave it a subtle squeeze.
I remembered Tucker’s warning the day before, in my apartment. I mean it, Mojo. Stay out of this case.
“This is a matter for the police, Mrs. Erland,” I said. “Not a private detective.”
“The police,” Helen mocked. “They think they’ve got the killer. They’re just going to pretend to investigate until all the media hype dies down. Then Vince will spend the rest of his life in prison—if he isn’t executed—and whoever did this will go free.”
I wondered how much of the conversation Gillian was taking in. She couldn’t hear, and being dead hadn’t changed that, but she’d probably learned to read her mother’s every expression, not just her lips.
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“I’ll look into it,” I heard myself say. It wasn’t the fee that prompted this decision—there wouldn’t be one. And it wasn’t the chance to learn by experience, so I’d be a better detective. Gillian wasn’t going to rest if the killer wasn’t found. That had to be the reason she was hanging around. “But I can’t promise anything, Mrs. Erland.”
A semblance of hope sparked in Helen’s sorrow-dimmed eyes. “Just do what they’re not doing,” she said.
I knew she was referring to the police again, and I nodded. “You’ll have to help me. Answer lots of questions. And if you can get me in to see Mr. Erland, I’d like to talk to him.” Read: size him up.
She nodded almost eagerly. “I get off at six,” she said. “Maybe you could come by my place, and we could talk. I’ll call Vince’s public defender and ask if he can arrange a visit.”
I nodded, but my mind had drifted to the body that was probably Alex’s. Greer’s world was about to collapse all around her, and I’d need to be there to help gather up the pieces. Not that she’d be grateful—comforting her would be like trying to bathe a porcupine.
“When’s your next day off?” I asked.
“I don’t have any days off,” Helen answered. “I took every shift I could get. Staying home makes me—well, I can’t stand it. There are too many reminders, and with Vince gone, it’s even worse.”
“I’ll stop by tonight, then,” I said. Jolie would be off work by then, if it didn’t take too long to process the crime scene. She’d have to be the one to bathe the porcupine. “Your place, around six-fifteen?”
Helen nodded and gave me directions.
I turned to leave, glancing at my watch, and I wasn’t surprised when Gillian didn’t follow. The poor kid wanted to be with her mother.
My throat knotted, and I wiped my eyes with the back of one hand.
I felt a little pang as I drove past Bad-Ass Bert’s, too. I’d finally worked up my courage to move back into my apartment, but it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. I’d have to stay at the guesthouse, in case Greer needed me.
Shit. I really wanted to go home.
It was still too early, but I headed for Beverly Pennington’s place anyway. It was an upscale condo in a gated community, and there were police cars clogging the entrance. The sheriff’s department, Phoenix and Scottsdale PD—the gang was all there.
I made an executive decision and canceled lunch.
No lobster for me. Maybe I’d spring for a box of fish sticks.
Jolie called again just as I was pulling into Greer’s driveway.
No squad cars in evidence there, anyway. And no sign of Greer’s pricey SUV.
Call me callous, but I was relieved.
“Was it Alex?” I asked, without a hello.
