by Betty Webb
To the uneducated eye, Wayfarer looked like a private house, but I’d been here many times before and knew the secrets it held. Two stories high and badly needing a paint job, it sat between an RV storage yard and a doggie daycare center. When I pulled to the curb, a dozen Chihuahuas and Pekes rushed to the fence next door and gave me yips of welcome. I yipped back, which made several of the furballs dance in glee and turn up the volume.
“Please don’t do that,” DeeZee said, exiting the house. “Those little bastards are annoying enough as it is.” She was forty-five, but like most women who’d spent decades working the streets, she looked at least sixty, with brittle, over-bleached hair, worry lines surrounding her eyes and mouth, a sagging jawline, and a chipped front tooth. The flowing caftan she wore completed her Frowsy Grandma chic.
“Point taken, DeeZee. So, what do you think?”
“It’s her, all right.”
Following her through the front door, I asked, “You file a report yet?”
“She’s not ready. Won’t even let me phone her mother.”
Soon after her mom’s new boyfriend moved into the house, Nikki had told DeeZee, he’d begun making less than subtle advances. At first the girl kept it to herself, but one afternoon when her mother was at work, the advances turned into rape. When she told her mother, she got slapped and called a liar. So Nikki ran away, only to wind up with a group of squatters in South Phoenix, one of whom was generous enough to share his heroin with her. Within days, he’d sold her to a trafficker, who then turned around a quick profit via resale. She got lucky when her third owner OD’d, and she was able to flee his apartment before another girl in his stable dialed 9-1-1. By then, Nikki had heard about Wayfarer.
She was sitting in the small dayroom reading a copy of Better Homes & Gardens when I walked in. Since she’d only been on the street for two months, she didn’t look too bad, just tired. There was a fading bruise under her left eye, but other than that, she appeared healthy. And, miraculously enough, she still looked innocent.
“Nikki, I’m Lena Jones, a private investigator. Your mother called and asked me to find you.”
“That’s rich.” She didn’t bother looking up.
“What are your plans?”
“What do you mean, plans?” Now she looked up.
“You know, after you leave Wayfarer. You can’t live here the rest of your life.”
“Who says?”
DeeZee, standing next to me, said, “Nikki, we’ve talked about this.”
The girl snorted and turned the page of her magazine. “You’re the one who did all the talking.”
Annoyance wasn’t evident in DeeZee’s voice when she said, “As I said, you can stay here as long as you want, but you do need to start building a life. An independent life, one which doesn’t include men who promise to rescue you.”
“But it’s okay if a woman says the same thing?”
“Most times.”
The girl looked up. Her eyes were almost as green as mine. “That’s sexist.”
“Maybe so,” I interjected, “but who’s helping you right here and now?”
Nikki let the magazine fall into her lap. “What you gonna do, then, narc me off to the cops ’cause I been turning tricks and all? Send me to jail?” She looked like an angry ten-year-old.
“No, because you’re the victim here,” I told her. “Those guys, they’re the criminals. You’d be doing a great service to other girls in your situation if you gave me some names. I have friends in high places…” I was thinking of Sylvie, who always had a hard-on for child traffickers “And they’d love to take those guys down.”
“They’d kill me.”
“Not from behind bars, they can’t. Besides, didn’t you go by a street name?”
The green eyes flashed. “Baby Sweetness.”
I held my feelings at bay. “The squatter who gave you heroin. What was his name?”
She looked down and mumbled something.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear that.”
“Just Zach.”
“Do you remember the squat’s address?”
She mumbled again, but this time I could make it out. The house the squatters were living in was located right off Van Buren, near the Arizona State Hospital. I made a mental note and moved on. It wouldn’t do for her to see me writing her answers down or, God forbid, recording them. “How about the name of the first guy who bought you?”
Her eyes dimmed. “Pink Floyd.”
“Like the old rock group?”
“Was that a group? They call him that ’cause he had red hair and pink skin.”
I made another mental note. “One more thing. I need the name of your last, ah, owner.”
The light came back to her eyes. “He called himself Kit Carson, and I hope he was dead by the time the EMTs arrived!”
Once back in my Jeep I let myself shake with rage for a few minutes while the Chihuahuas and Pekes next door whined along in accompaniment. Then I called Sylvie to relate what I’d just heard, said goodbye to the yipping furballs, and headed for Nikki’s mother’s house. It took a while because she lived in the Paradise Valley hills, and those winding streets are always a bugger.
After a full five minutes of ringing the bell and pounding on the door—Lorraine hadn’t answered my phone calls—the door finally opened. The woman standing there was exactly what I’d pictured after driving though the expensive neighborhood. Tall, fit, auburn hair fashionably streaked with blond highlights, Lorraine Gideon wore an aqua linen pantsuit that probably cost more than Jimmy’s Toyota pickup truck. The pantsuit needed to be cleaned, though.
“Who are you and why do you keep banging on my door? Go away before I call the police.”
Talk about an empty threat. I gave her my best smile. “I’m Lena Jones, the private investigator you called about Nikki, and I just dropped by to tell you that she is safe and is staying with a friend. And I hate to be rude or anything, but you’ve got blood all over yourself.”
A brief expression of joy crossed her face then faded when she looked down at the red-spattered pantsuit. “I’m, uh, uh, cooking. Roast beef. I got, I got this…I got all messy transferring it from the freezer to the stove. I, uh, buy in bulk. You need to go. Like, um, now. I have a lot, um, a lot of things to do, you know?” The longer she talked, the paler her face became.
“Not that I’m a kitchen-know-it-all or anything, Lorraine, but it looks like you must have butchered that cow yourself.”
She attempted to shut the door, but I was stronger than she was. Also sneakier. Before she could do anything about it, I’d shoved my way into the entrance hall, from where I could see into a long, dark living room. She had closed the blinds against a perfect Arizona day. The living room wasn’t so dark, though, that I couldn’t see a man spread-eagled on the oak parquet floor. A glistening puddle surrounded his head.
I looked at her. “That’s Mike, I take it.”
No answer.
“Gun? Knife? Blunt instrument?”
Lorraine’s eyes widened. Even in the dim light I could see they were the same color as her daughter’s. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Amateurs often mistake the living for the dead, so I pushed by her and went over to see if Mike still had a pulse. But Mike was dead, all right. A few feet away from him lay a bronze bust of a Lakota warrior. There was a dent in the Indian’s nose.
“Want me to call the police?”
“Oh, Jesus, no!” She all but fell on her knees in supplication.
“Then maybe you’d better tell me what happened.”
She looked down at the rapidly cooling body. Even in October, she was running the air-conditioning, which in this case was probably a good thing. It would screw with the time of death.
“I…okay, but…I need to sit down. And not…not in here.”
> Taking her by the arm, I led her in a wide arc around the dead child rapist and into the Architectural Digest kitchen. White marble, black granite, money, money, money.
“How about there?” I pointed to a cunning little cabaret set-up nestled into a bay window.
She sat. Looked down at her bloodied pantsuit again. Wrung her hands.
“Tell me,” I said, sitting across from her.
Her story had been duplicated on a thousand police reports. After our earlier phone conversation, she had done some hard thinking about good ol’ Mike, and came to the belated conclusion that there might be truth in her daughter’s claim. This morning she had confronted him, and it hadn’t gone well. At first he’d denied Nikki’s account, calling the girl a lying tease, but after repeated questioning, he said the “little slut” had “seduced” him.
She slapped him and ordered him out of the house.
He went.
Shaken, she’d opened a bottle of Chivas and poured herself a stiff one. Thought about what she should do next.
The ruminations stopped when Mike came back for his clothes, and the situation, lubricated by a half glass of Chivas, deteriorated.
“He…he threatened to kill me if I called the police.”
“You told him you were going to call them?”
She nodded. “I…I think so. It’s just that there was a lot of screaming back and forth and I can’t remember everything I said. But I’m pretty sure I said that.”
“Tell me about the bronze statue in the living room. When did you grab it?”
“After he told me he was going to cut my throat.”
“He had a knife?”
“No, but he was on the way into the kitchen, and I thought…”
“So you actually killed him in self-defense!”
“Kind of.” She wrung her bloodied hands some more. “But he didn’t have the knife yet. He was just on the way to get it.”
Her admission complicated things, because cops don’t like it when only the perpetrator in a self-defense claim actually has a weapon. Same with judges and juries. “Does Mike have family here locally?” I asked.
“A younger sister. He told me they don’t keep in touch.”
I could guess why. “He have any friends you know about?”
She brushed her hair back, and in doing so, smeared blood on those expensive highlights. “He was what you’d call a loner.”
“Nobody will miss him, then.” Least of all, Nikki.
Lorraine tried to smile and failed.
Several years earlier, one of my former clients, a woman who had since become a good friend, had been faced with a problem similar to Lorraine’s. I’d helped her solve it, so it was time for her to return the favor.
I picked up my cell and called DeeZee.
Two hours later, all existence of Michael Elias Bungeon—at least that’s what his driver’s license called him—had vanished from the Gideon residence, thanks to the two men I’d never seen before and would hopefully never see again. The house smelled of Mr. Clean, and Lorraine, having showered and shampooed, smelled like lilacs.
Chapter Seventeen
Emotionally drained from the day’s work, I decided to kill three birds with one stone by continuing my research into Kanati’s complicated organizational affairs, check on Chelsea’s welfare, and at the same time, treat myself to a massage and maybe some French cuisine. So after phoning Jimmy and telling him where I was going, I practiced smiling while I drove out to Kanati to take Gabrielle up on her standing offer. Heck, as rattled as my nerves were, I might even attend the group meditation, the better to check out the mysterious Adam.
In Arizona, October can be an iffy month, and halfway there, it began to rain. Not much, just enough for raindrops to splash a polka dot pattern in the dust on the Jeep’s hood. But when I finally arrived at Kanati, I saw that even this little drizzle had driven Ernie under the roof of his little shelter.
“If I’d wanted rain I would have stayed in Seattle,” he complained, waving me to the parking lot.
Ernie appeared to be the only one bothered by the rain shower. When I walked through the stockade’s gate, I saw several people looking up at the sky, arms outstretched. Chelsea was among them.
“Refreshing, isn’t it?” she said, spotting me.
“Kinda. How are you doing?”
“You mean after being kidnapped and held for ransom?”
“No ransom was involved.”
“Maybe not, but I’ll never speak to Harold again.”
I didn’t believe her. Chelsea was one of those women who leave, return, leave again, return again. For her, the grass was not always just greener on the other side; once she was there, she decided it had actually been greener in the place she’d left. It was a dizzying way to live, but she needed a therapist to tell her that, not me.
“You never answered my question, Chelsea. How are you doing?”
“How’s it look like I’m doing?” She laughed and twirled around in the rain. “I’m happy! Kanati is the place I’ve been looking for all my life.” She stopped mid-whirl. “Hey, are you thinking about joining? Seems like you’re here all the time these days.”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘all the time.’ Besides, I’m not much of a joiner.” Especially when I’m not sure I’m buying everything they’re selling. Then I noticed she was wearing a headband decorated with one blue bead. “Hey, how’d you get that?”
“Think I stole it?” At my expression, she began to laugh. “Adam said I’ve been doing so well after what happened that it proves I’ve moved up to a higher level. I’ve been Elevating!”
I pretended ignorance. “Who’s Adam?”
“Only the guy who founded this place! He said I’m making great progress, and he would know.”
Whatever was going on with the not-yet-seen Adam, he could have been right. I’d never seen Chelsea look so healthy and carefree, almost as if she was becoming the woman she was meant to be before drugs and neediness derailed her.
“Congratulations on the blue bead,” I said, feeling slightly silly to be standing in the rain, congratulating a woman on her fake Indian headdress.
As quickly as the rain had begun, it stopped. Chelsea and the other twirlers kept looking into the sky for a few moments, and when no more rain was forthcoming, dropped their outstretched arms and walked away.
“You staying for dinner?” Chelsea asked, wiping the moisture off her face.
“I’m thinking about it.” I wanted another talk with Gabrielle, too.
“Consider yourself invited.”
“That’s nice of you, but I thought Gabrielle Halberd was the only person who could issue invitations. Or your new friend Adam, of course.”
Grinning, Chelsea tapped the blue bead on her headband. “Now that I’ve got this, I can invite anyone I want.”
Power can be a heady thing.
The massage consisted of a half hour’s kneading and pounding, but it drove away the memory of Mike Bungeon’s untimely end, not that he was any great loss. But the deaths of Reservation Woman, Megan Unruh, and Ford Laumenthal still haunted me. No massage could fix them.
Forcing myself to think of pleasanter things, I joined the rest of the Kanati gang in the big dining hall. Outside, the setting sun had turned the sky orange, purple, and pink, and the light streaming through the lodge’s windows spread its golden glow over everyone. Basking in that glow, I helped myself to small servings—no point in overdoing things—of Chicken Basquaise, Salmon Rillettes, Tomatoes Stuffed with Duck Confit, Mushroom Risotto, Potatoes Gratin Dauphinoise, and for desert, Almond Frangipane Tart with Cranberries and Honeyed Pistachios.
Gabrielle, who had seen me come in, steered Chelsea and me to her table. She asked how my day had been.
“I’ve had a pretty good day,” I said, trying to forget about Michael E
lias Bungeon’s crushed skull.
“When you rushed into OK Corral you looked almost frantic. Perhaps you should come see us more often. Perhaps even stay and become one of us. There are so many ways a woman with your energy could help around here.”
Finally. A direct sales pitch. But it was odd in a way, because Jimmy’s continued poking around in Kanati’s financial affairs—those that he could get into, anyway—had revealed that most of its members were worth a million bucks up. Surely Gabrielle wasn’t under the assumption I had that kind of money. So what made me so special?
Unaware of my suspicions, Chelsea stopped chomping on her Cruisses de Grenouilles long enough to say, “That’s exactly what I’ve been telling Lena. Join Kanati and forget about that crazy world outside!”
Gabrielle gave her a brilliant smile. “It is a wonderful thing for you to encourage your friend so.”
Chelsea flushed with pleasure.
Time to break up the love fest. “Gabrielle, I recognize that I don’t know a lot about France, especially its educational system, but I was wondering exactly how you met Adam Arneault.”
The brilliant smile dimmed somewhat. “As I told you, I was on a spiritual quest.”
“You didn’t go to school together?”
“Why would you wish to know such a thing?” No smile at all now.
Careful. Careful. “Because you’re so intelligent, and I figured Adam would have to be super intelligent in order to conceive of a place like Kanati, so I…” I shrugged. “Don’t all smart people in France go to the Ecole Polytechnique?”
“France has many schools for the gifted. But since you are so curious, yes, Adam also attended Ecole Polytechnique, but as he is a few years older than am I, we did not meet there.”
“Too bad. It would have saved you years of fruitless searching, wouldn’t it?”
She looked relieved. “You are correct, mon amie.”
Careful to keep a convivial smile on my face, “Like you once said, Gabrielle, life is complicated. Look at my own. I have a business to run, a boyfriend to keep happy, and a house to help build. Not that I’d been doing much of that, lately.”