Peril in Silver Nightshade: A small town police procedural set in the American Southwest (The Pegasus Quincy Mystery Series Book 4)

by Lakota Grace

  Shepherd and I looked at each other. Then we both laughed.

  “Better check those bills,” I said. “Make sure they're not counterfeit.”

  I stuck around after Ms. Delaney left and used Shepherd's computer to Google the whereabouts of Manresa Snow. She was still an artist with a listed address as the Southwest Views Gallery in Mingus not far from my cabin.

  At least I wouldn’t spend much gas money doing this inquiry. I’d make a quick interview and get on with my life. I called the gallery number and asked if Manresa Snow was in.

  “What do you want her for?”

  There was a hint of suspicion in the woman’s voice. Had Silver Delaney been working her charms on this woman, too?

  “That's something I'll discuss with her. When will she be in?”

  “She's doing a raku workshop at an elementary school this morning. You’ll need to come this afternoon.”

  I made arrangements to drop by at one, which gave me time to go home and let Reckless out for a run. I loved the pup, but sometimes taking care of him cramped my style.

  I’d confirm this woman’s refusal to talk to her daughter. Then I'd wait for Silver Delaney to contact me so I could tell her “no dice” on the approach to her mother. My share of that meager retainer, with what the sheriff's department owed me, would cover the rent this month. What I did to survive.

  I wished I could be more charitable toward Silver Delaney. On the other hand, I’d learned to trust my first impressions, and I didn’t like her. My grandfather HT might say she reminded me too much of myself. And he’d be right. Sometimes I didn’t like myself much, either.

  Uncooperative Parents

  ~ 15 ~

  Pegasus

  Manresa Snow’s art gallery was set on one of the winding streets of Mingus. The front had an old brick exterior. After four disastrous fires in the 1800s, the town fathers had decreed buildings must be constructed of brick or cement only. Their ruling defined the look of Mingus ever since.

  A small bell over the door tinkled as I walked through. Soft New Age music played through hidden speakers, and ahead of me, the windowed back wall of the gallery looked out upon the spreading valley floor. On the horizon rose the San Francisco Peaks still snow covered. At twelve thousand feet elevation, the mountaintops would be white until midsummer.

  A small woman in her mid-forties with dark curly hair approached me.

  “Hello and welcome to Art Views Gallery.”

  “Your business sign says it all,” I said, pointing to the window.

  “Yes, isn’t it great!” She extended her hand. “I’m Adaire Ybarra.”

  The words rolled off her tongue in a proud expansion of phrase.

  “A beautiful name. Spanish?” I asked.

  “Basque. My grandfather was one of the original sheepherders that brought the flocks from the aspen meadows near Flagstaff to winter in the Verde Valley. How can I help you? We just got in these amazing handwoven pieces.”

  She brushed her hand through a row of vivid orange and magenta wool shawls.

  “Or perhaps some hanging art?” She turned and gestured toward a wall covered with wildly colored acrylic abstracts.

  “They’re all lovely, but no. I called earlier. I’m Pegasus Quincy, and I’m here to speak with…”

  “Me.”

  A stolid woman with long graying hair fastened with a tortoise-shell clip approached us from the interior of the store. She touched Ms. Ybarra’s shoulder with an intimate gesture.

  “Adaire told me you were coming. Why don’t we visit downstairs in my studio? We can talk while I unload the kiln.”

  I followed her down a winding metal staircase to a cement-floored basement, and from there out to a patio where an electric kiln had the door propped open, cooling.

  Heat waves shimmered above it, and Manresa reached for two pairs of asbestos gloves.

  “Give me a hand? Adaire usually helps, but she’s busy in the gallery this morning.”

  “Have you been together long?” I asked, putting on the gloves.

  She gave me a direct glance, acknowledging my unasked question.

  “We’ve been partners for twenty years, now engaged to be married.” She flashed a diamond-studded band in my direction.

  “Congratulations,” I responded. Since the Supreme Court ruling, many couples were now able to recognize legally what had been an established fact for decades.

  “Thank you. It’s been a long time coming.”

  She put on the gloves and lifted out two finely wrought porcelain pieces and handed them to me.

  “Careful, these are hot, but I can’t resist opening the kiln as soon as I can to find what surprises await me. I assume that you’ve come about Andy?” she asked. “Beatrix told me of his tragic death.”

  Things started to click. “You were married to Henry Fisher, then. Is Andy your—”

  “Son? No.”

  She took the last shelf and supporting posts out of the kiln and stacked them on a rack nearby. Then she removed her gloves and apron.

  “It’s a long story. Time someone heard it. Let me make tea and we’ll talk.”

  We sat on the patio, watching Costa hummingbirds in nearby blooming plum and apricot trees. Once the smelters stopped running in the 1950s, residents of Mingus planted backyards of fruit orchards that flourished in the mountain air now free of the poisonous sulfuric fumes.

  Manresa poured the hot tea into hand-thrown mugs, done in a mottled blue-gray shade, with small flowers incised into the clay pattern. She gestured to them.

  “This is a new glaze from the electric kiln. I’m trying to replicate the shifts in shading you get in a natural gas reduction kiln.”

  “Lovely,” I said. I sipped the tea, waiting for her to begin.

  “Andy,” I prompted, once a moment had passed. If she’d talk about her stepson, that might lead to the real reason for my being here, her possible parentage of Silver Delaney.

  “Andy. He was troubled, even as a child. Henry was a widower when I started going out with him. His wife Zillah had committed suicide—or so they said. I was never convinced.”

  “Trouble between them?” I asked.

  “Lots! I was a hairdresser at the time and Henry visited my shop for a trim and gave me an earful. And then later in the day, Zillah would come in for a perm and I’d get her side of it. I did a lot of husband-and-wife haircut combos, but those two took the cake. Andy trailed after his mother and sat in the chair, swinging his little feet, waiting for her. Poor tyke.”

  She took a sip of tea and fanned her brow. With the lid propped open, the cooling kiln was a blast furnace.

  “Did the disagreements between the Fishers ever turn physical?” I asked.

  “Never could prove it. Several times Zillah came in with bruises on her arms, once a black eye. She told me she ran into a door. And then she stopped coming, and I heard that she’d killed herself.”

  “And Henry?”

  “Well, funny thing, he kept coming for haircuts. Then he asked me out, and I accepted. He could be very charming and persuasive when he wanted something.”

  “He wanted you.”

  “And he got me—for a while,” she replied. “But to be honest, it was a two-way street. I couldn’t see myself cutting hair for the rest of my life. Henry offered me a way to go back to school and get my art degree. And then there was Andy. That poor little guy needed a mother.”

  “Henry said Andy wasn’t his.”

  “Might not have been,” Manresa agreed. “Zillah was a waitress who flirted with everybody, even after she and Henry got married. I think that’s what caused their conflict.

  “Perhaps I was taking a risk,” she said, “knowing what I did. But Henry seemed changed after Zillah’s death, somber and less prone to anger. Then his company ran into financial difficulties. Henry started hitting the bottle, and me.” She sighed. “I tried to stick it out, for Andy’s sake. And then I found out I was pregnant.”

  Finally, we were gett
ing to the point of my meeting. I’d let it play out and then introduce the purpose of my visit.

  “What did you do then?”

  “I hid the pregnancy from Henry, moved out. Andy wanted to come with me, but his father refused. I kept in touch with the boy for a time, but Henry put a restraining order in place. Broke my heart, but what could I do?

  “I made an attempt to reconcile with Andy when he turned 21, but he hated me. He was bitter that I’d left him with Henry. I tried to explain, but Andy didn’t understand. And now he’s gone for good.” Her eyes moistened.

  Interesting. Henry Fisher had insinuated that Andy had lived with Manresa, not with him. More distancing. The kid must have been very lonely growing up. I knew the feeling, with my own single mom often neglecting me during her love affair with the bottle.

  And now was Manresa repeating the neglect cycle with her own daughter, Silver Delaney? Time to move to the purpose of my visit.

  “But you had a chance to start again with your new baby. Was it a girl or a boy?”

  “A little girl, with this striking white hair. She looked like a fairy child.”

  Now we were getting somewhere.

  “What did you name her?”

  “I nicknamed her Silver in my daydreams. But I left the birth certificate blank. I knew she’d be adopted right away. She was such a beautiful child.”

  Manresa shivered remembering the difficult time. “I was a new artist, trying to make my way in a very competitive world. I had nothing to give a child. I placed her with an adoption agency. I thought she’d have a better chance there than with me. Then I moved to Taos, fell in love, and started over with Adaire.”

  “That had to be tough, giving up your baby, starting over,” I said.

  Her mouth twisted. “That presents another problem I’m struggling with. I never divorced Henry. And I never told Adaire. Now she wants to get married. I approached Henry and asked for the divorce.”

  “Did he agree?”

  “Of course not. He laughed in my face. You have to understand, that in order to do that, he has to admit he’s a bigamist, and that makes that new little son of his a bastard.” She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the unpleasantness.

  “You’re easy to talk to,” she said.

  “Folks often tell me that.”

  “Enough about me. Why did you want to talk to me if it wasn’t about Andy?”

  It was the opening I was looking for.

  “The private investigative firm I work for represents your daughter.”

  “I figured as much,” Manresa said. “When I refused to speak to her, I had a feeling she’d try another approach.”

  Manresa hesitated for a moment. “What does she look like, my Silver?”

  “Deep blue eyes. And she still has that white hair. Striking.”

  “My grandmother had that hair,” Manresa said. “They say it sometimes skips a generation.”

  There was a yearning note in her voice. Then she held up one hand, two fingers crooked and out of place.

  “Henry did this.”

  She rose abruptly and tossed the remains of her tea over the side of the hill.

  “I refuse to let Henry Fisher ruin another life. You go back to that girl and tell her she’s a test-tube baby, with no parents to claim her.”

  “But—”

  “My mind’s made up. It’s better that way.”

  She left me then, climbing the metal staircase to the gallery above.

  I closed my open mouth. Silver had inherited more than white hair from her mother’s side of the family. Both mother and daughter were as stubborn as balky mules. That presented a tough challenge. Some way, somehow, I needed to get these two together.

  And it was time that the old man met his daughter, too. I didn’t know how to reconcile the parents with this wayward girl, but I’d cogitate for a while. It would come to me.

  House of Apache Fires

  ~ 16 ~

  Pegasus

  After my meeting with Manresa, I drove to my cabin to tackle my next project, the proposed exchange of a lemon meringue pie for access to the House of Apache Fires mansion. For an unemployed person, I was awfully busy.

  There was, of course, the small problem that I no longer had an intact pie to trade. I had promised myself I'd get up early and make another one for Grady before the meeting with Shepherd and Silver, but it hadn’t happened.

  And thoughtful brownies hadn’t been there in my absence and baked me a new one. When I opened the refrigerator door, a lonely two-thirds of a pie sat on the shelf.

  Would it be better to buy a new pie at Safeway? I could move it to an expensive glass pie dish and sprinkle real lemon juice on top. I considered that for a moment. Nah, Grady was smart. She'd spot that ruse. Besides, I’d used my ready cash on ingredients for this one. And those deli pies cost money.

  I had to face up to the music. But if I was only giving Grady part of a pie, it needed to look good. I evened up the edges and shaved off another sliver which I ate in two bites. Reckless licked the remainder off my fingers.

  I wrapped the plate with a piece of aluminum foil and headed for Red Rock State Park. Grady was out on patrol when I entered the visitor's center.

  The volunteer manning the cash register said, “Here, something for you.”

  She pulled my last paycheck from her desk drawer and handed it to me.

  “I'm so sorry. I always thought you did a fine job here.”

  I shifted from one foot to another. What could I say about being fired? Embarrassed, I shoved the envelope into my pocket as Grady came bustling in the front door.

  Her eyes lit up at the sight of the pie dish, and then her expression sobered as she pushed back the aluminum foil and saw the conspicuous absence of several pieces.

  “Hey! What happened to the rest of it?”

  She stuck a finger in the meringue and then popped it into her mouth. “Good, though.”

  A pragmatist. That’s what I liked about Grady.

  “Let's put this in the employee lounge and then go for that walk,” she said.

  Now she was talking.

  In the lunchroom, Grady took a napkin from one drawer and pulled a marker from another. “Property of Grady,” she wrote in big black letters and scotch-taped the napkin to the foil covering the pie plate.

  “Maybe this will hold the ranger-herd off until I get back.”

  She shoved a few lunches out of the way, placed the pie on the middle refrigerator shelf and closed the door. Then she paused.

  “Or not.”

  She removed the pie from the refrigerator and stuck it on the top shelf of the cabinet over the sink, note still attached.

  “They'll never think to look there,” she said.

  I wasn't so sure, knowing the maintenance crew.

  We headed out on Bunkhouse Trail toward Kingfisher Bridge. I cast an uneasy glance at the meadow where we'd found Andy Fisher's body, his death being the reason why I was here this morning.

  Maybe investigating the House of Apache Fires would provide no clues, but I had to try. Beatrix Fisher deserved that at least. And the old man did, too. He was still under suspicion for the death of his estranged son. Closure would be good for for both of them.

  As we neared the bridge, a lazuli bunting with a brilliant turquoise head and orange breast flitted into the bright green of a new-leafed cottonwood tree. The sycamores with their mega-huge leaves wouldn't be out for another month yet. They were the last to leaf and the first to drop them, but during the summer they provided a generous shady cover for the creek trails.

  Sedona proper had over three million tourists annually, but Red Rock State Park was off the beaten path. Sightseeing helicopters were forbidden to fly-over, and it was off limits for four-wheel-drive enthusiasts. That meant the park had two hundred acres of prime territory, worth millions on the real estate market, but preserved in perpetuity thanks to the far-sighted conservationists. Sometimes early in the morning before the park opene
d, I’d walk the trails feeling like a millionaire in my own estate. That was, before I was fired.

  Grady checked the gauge as we crossed the Kingfisher pedestrian bridge. The water had risen three feet since yesterday, and she looked worried.

  “Word is, we've got yet more headed our direction. The snowpack near Flagstaff is melting too fast.”

  “This bridge was built to withstand a hundred-year flood. It’ll be okay,” I said, rapping the wooden railing for good luck.

  On the other side of the bridge, we passed through the “Wedding Tree” meadow, so called because the immense cottonwood there was a favorite site of wedding planners in the area. It had originally been two infant trees that grew intertwined, with a huge V where they separated higher up. They promised decades of a successful relationship, each supporting the other. It was something I’d never had.

  Then we hiked the steep hill trail, winding to the top of the ridge. At the crest, we passed the Kiva-like outdoor meeting area and the remnants of the old two-wheeled logging cart that had brought bracing timbers from the forests below.

  The house itself was built from native red rock quarried on the premises and formed a long, low outline on the horizon. It nestled in a grove of pinon pines and was surrounded by a high chain-link fence, padlocked securely.

  Grady dug a key out of her pocket and unlocked the gate. We walked through, and she hooked the padlock through the joining hasp.

  “I hate to see this place off limits for the tourists. But it’s not safe to have them here, with the roof in the condition it is.”

  We climbed the low flat steps of the entryway and Grady took out another key. But the door was ajar. She stopped in confusion.

  “Isn’t the house supposed to be locked?” I asked.

  “Maybe the head ranger brought somebody up to see it,” Grady said. “He's always trying to get a grant to put a new roof on. But to bring the mansion up to current building code would cost millions. Still, a shame to let it fall to ruins. It's a part of our history.”

  The house had an air of quiet expectancy as though it had been waiting for us. I could imagine an elegant dinner party given here by the Fryes, with the airline industry executives like Howard Hughes in attendance.