“I opened the door to get the morning paper and the envelope fell out of it.”
Studying my name printed in calligraphy on the front, I smoothed my fingers over the shaky but honorable old style of formal writing.
“Come on! Open it!” Sterling said.
Having had more death threats circulating around me, I thought better of the idea. I passed the envelope over to Sterling.
She snatched it in midair and ripped the seal. Then she stopped.
“I’m too chicken. I don’t play this game as well as I pretend,” she said. She passed the envelope back to Carly.
Carly studied the writing. “It’s difficult to decipher. The writing is horrible,” she said.
“Okay. The message is plain and simple. She read it aloud:
“Good girls. It was no suicide.”
Sterling withdrew deeper into her seat cushion and pulled her lanky legs up toward her chin. She drew a long breath. “You see! We have more friends on board with us, right?”
I scoured the note. And then each and every word. Every letter.
It was surely that from the old man that had sent me the reward of a few bucks after I returned his wallet. And that claim check for the stupid set of golf clubs. But how could that be?
“At least he’s not scaring us away,” Carly said, unable to understand where my deductions had taken me.
I wondered. Was he trying to scare us? At the very least he was a stalker, if it was the same old man that had spied me dining alone in Cattrozzi’s and now knew three of us had arrived in Tucson on an uninviting mission. It didn’t feel, to me, that the unknown welcoming committee really welcomed us on our journey.
No. He wouldn’t scare us away. But maybe he was inviting us into his web.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
On the Trail
WE CHECKED OUT OF Starr Pass without the luxury of enjoying the pool or the golf course. We made the drive to Saguaro National Park East.
“You didn’t fail us, Sterling,” Carly said. “I can’t believe what you dug up.”
The same kind of amazement I felt. Smart dumb blonde.
All three of us were a united front, if only words on any faded T-shirt. We told ourselves that if we had seen three saguaro skeletons in the west park we would have remembered such an unusual sight. Plus, we had photographs to back up our memories.
Sterling confirmed that no one outside of the forest ranger knew of our impending hike. Still, I watched the rearview all the way across town, down Tanque Verde Road, and even well into the park’s parking lot. Be they friends or foes, it seemed that we were rich with persons interested in our pursuit.
Sterling navigated us toward our trailhead on to the Cactus Forest Trail. Equipped with hiking boots, heavy work gloves, and a couple of small hand trowels we’d picked up at yet another Tucson hardware store, we headed up the trail.
Once on the trail, Carly was the first to falter, but only after tripping twice and catching her fall with gloves that only protected her hands. Stickers shot up out of the skin on her arms.
“This is a waste of time,” she said. “Why would Payton come all the way across Tucson to this park when she lived on the west side? It’s not like there aren’t plenty of hiding places there.”
“Keep walking. Keep looking,” Sterling said, with a sudden healthy outburst of a Boy Scout’s attitude.
And we did.
A trio of troopers. Naive in desert country and even more naive about what the hell we were trying to accomplish.
Still, as all little troopers go, we marched forward like amorous dogs in search of tail. Any tail.
Sterling forged ahead on our ominous mission, sweeping branches and stickers out of our way, and even pointing out the horny toad taking shelter under a massive rock. Dust swirled around us and somehow we took relief in the hot breeze.
Carly grumbled something again about stumbling into three human skulls. We laughed and refueled on the water bottles with electrolytes we’d picked up at Trader Joe’s. The water was warm. We didn’t complain with the wet sensation on our dry mouths and tongues.
We continued for another mile or so. The trail wasn’t steep. Carly and I took turns taking photographs. Of nothing. When we came upon a cluster of boulders it took no communication for all of us to decide it was time to rest. Drawing on our bottled water, we swung our necks at the sound of snapping twigs behind us.
“It’s a public trail,” I said, with water dribbling down my chin.
“Yes,” Sterling mumbled, taking in the vista that surrounded us with ample viewing opportunities for anyone that may care to look. Or spy.
Carly forced a laugh. “We’re paranoid. Look at us! We look like punk Desert Rats. Nobody gives a damn about what the three of us are up to.”
Little doubt none of us believed our own words. We felt vulnerable. Exposed to both the desert sun and the juxtaposed danger of mankind, we remembered Victor Romero’s warning.
We shared one question, for we knew we were being watched.
Friend or foe?
Chapter Sixty
Snake
COMMON SENSE DICTATED we stick to the trail. Carly had procured a walking stick from the desert brush and now took the lead. At the sound of castanets where no castanets should be in the middle of fricking nowhere, she froze.
The coiled rattlesnake sprung left, then right. He was near enough I could see the diamonds on his back and his forked tongue biting at the air.
Sterling neared me. With a low voice she demanded the potion.
“What?” I said.
“Don’t fuck with us now, Lauren. The voodoo potion. You have it in your backpack. Slowly pull it out and use it.”
Both Carly and Sterling had given me plenty of crap about Geoff’s crazy grandmother’s potion. Sterling knew I had it when I’d long ago forgotten I’d tossed it into in my backpack to journey through the middle of the Sonoran Desert.
I slid the small vial from the stiff denier of the outer pocket on my backpack. I fondled it. I tried to recall Geoff’s words when he gave it to me. I closed my eyes.
I placed one drop on my tongue, then spat it out. That is what Sterling and Carly told me later as I have no clear recall.
The snake’s rattling grew fiercer.
Two drops dripped onto my tongue.
The snake reared its head, prepared to strike at any or all of us.
Something inside of me continued with her tongue sticking out of me, the vial of liquid catching glints from the high sun. I turned to Sterling and spat the liquid into her face. I turned to Carly and spat in her face.
I could hear myself. I had no control. I began to ululate in a voice more customary of ancient cultures, times, and places.
The snake uncoiled. Wary, watching, then turning to slither away.
“Let’s go,” I suddenly announced. I felt a lift of opaque fog that had clouded my memory, and maybe my judgment.
Carly and Sterling were still frozen in their hiking boots, but eager to get away.
Sterling backed up. Carly cowered.
“No,” I said. “We have to follow it.”
“You have to be out of your fucking mind,” Sterling said.
“We follow it,” I demanded.
The encounter is one I will not forget. I stood almost trancelike but fully cognizant, in the middle of the desert.
For me, it amounted to a trust that materialized out of the dust that day. A knowing trust.
We followed the snake as it winded away, and within minutes we stood before three fallen saguaro.
Other than Carly’s shoulder twitching, we came to a still stop in front of the skeletons. Once again took I the vial of potion, stared at my friends, and placed four drops in the position of the four directions.
I said we must fall to our knees and bless the earth. Three city girls and with a rattlesnake nearby. But they did as I somehow instructed, in silence and with jaws dropped.
Chapter Sixty-One
Vo
odoo & Who
IN ONE MOMENT of eternity we watched the snake slither away.
I regained a sense of purpose. I pulled out the hand rake wedged into my belt. Sterling and Carly followed suit. None of us spoke about what had just occurred. Not one word.
It was I that pulled at the arm of the furthest skeleton. It shattered under my hard tug, and beneath it I could see the corner of a clear plastic bag.
Sterling dropped to the ground. “What is it?” she said in her own calm but upbeat voice.
“It’s a flash stick,” I said.
A severely damaged flash stick that looked like it had endured years on a populated railroad track.
It was then that I heard Geoff’s words replaying in my mind when he handed me his magic potion: “My grandmother had one more message. You will sing and have no memory of it, and that will be a good thing.”
WE DELIVERED THE bag and its contents to Victor Romero. It had not survived the elements in the plastic bag. The heat had melted what was left of the plastic surrounding the element. A creature had long ago ravished most of it, extracting what he could to make a nice comfy den somewhere nearby, Romero told us.
“Indeed,” Romero said. “The treasures of the desert. I’ll have to send it to a lab. See if we can get anything off of it. I can’t promise you much.”
We nodded.
“Do you mind telling me how you found it?”
I looked across at Sterling. Carly looked at me. Sterling looked at my backpack.
“Must have been voodoo magic,” I said.
DETECTIVE WRAY MIGHT as well have been Denzel Washington as he took over the halls of CoverBoy. He’d interviewed the entire staff at least twice, and they all loved him. He was still an annoying Columbo to me.
He positioned himself at my door, holding up a hand with the index finger raised. “Just one more question, today, Ms. Visconti. This won’t take long.”
I kept reminding myself his presence around our offices meant free additional security.
“Yes, Detective?”
“Do you know of a place called The Center?”
The lump in my throat wasn’t going down. What was he up too, now?
“I’m just curious,” he continued.
“Yes. I know of it.”
“Now does that mean you know of it in the magazine publishing business, or is it a personal knowledge?”
THE LAWYER COAL HAD scrounged up along the way and so many years ago turned out to be his trump card. A coup to find the little esquire. Not so hot at getting him off the string of misdemeanor charges and warnings, but most excellent in handling the mishandling of estate law. It seemed the guy had found his niche acting as executor to the largest estates whose heirs were either MIA or otherwise mentally incapacitated. When Coal first met this fine attorney, the man was acting attorney and executor to twelve of the city’s largest empirical fortunes.
Unfortunately Coal put an end to that prosperous relationship when some of his carnal temptations made their way to the misguided and unforgiving press. Turns out that by some cruel act of fate one of Coal’s conquests turned out to be the whiney attorney’s ten-year old nephew.
Coal had learned his lessons. After the revocation of his license in New York, he headed off to the dusty highways of Arizona, where life promised him anonymity and along with that, a certain absolution if only by omissions.
Coal was a master at patience. That discipline would unlock the larger than life pocket books unsuspectingly hidden around the small city of Tucson. He was the only player in town. He’d hone in on the lonely and the depressed and especially, yes—the suicidal. Great companions. Better marks.
The next stage was the most delicate. Wait. As they turned to him more and more he’d start them out on a diet low in protein. Wait. Then love-bomb them again. And wait again. He’d deplete their bodies of nutrients, then enrich their fragile minds in what he could do for them. And he would wait with a timing superior to the rising and falling sun.
This crazy runaway drifter kid he’d met in New York led him directly to Tucson and his even crazier sister. Payton Doukas was relatively low stakes, but her two friends were royal tickets. And the third friend from Chicago would be moving to California. He had every intention of setting up ‘shop’ long before her arrival.
He’d studied their profiles. Lauren Visconti would be the biggest mark he’d ever made. Poor little rich girl. Daddy died. Fiancé died. Everybody poor little Lauren loves seems to die.
It didn’t hurt that Coal knew about the rape, too. Bad blood running in that girl. And Coal knew that idea of a bastard seed left Visconti helpless. And Visconti had no idea that she and Coal shared the same blood. Poor little Lauren. She didn’t stand a chance, especially because she believed it.
Armand was right. Two little problems with Visconti. She was smart and well connected. She was also messed up and vulnerable. And perfect for a take. Especially given the fact that with every one of those tragic deaths Lauren’s financial pot grew exponentially.
Sterling Falls would prove to be a bit more challenging. Oh, not getting her into bed. That would only be his problem if it came time to perform with a woman. Smallish boobs, and he didn’t even like boobs. An outrageous personality, which Coal admitted fascinated him. Maybe that would prove to be the ultimate challenge. But she was dumb and dumber. With a very rich daddy.
She had no money to speak of, but all of that would change dramatically with the fatal fall of Old Man Falls. Coal would take care of those nasty details, and who knows? Maybe he had groomed Armand well enough to take the Falls girl in the sexual relations department. He’d seen Sterling fixate her eyes on any and every handsome foreign-looking man. God knows Armand would be up to the task, as long as he didn’t beat her up. The thing is, and oh, Coal was so good at this—he saw something in the bimbo no one else could perceive. Something. She’d be tricky to fully conquer. He’d have to go to work, research her a little more, and trust in his powers of persuasion.
Knowledge is power.
Chapter Sixty-Two
No Kissing Cousins
WHEN BAD THINGS happen to good people they either get tough or let go. Sometimes they die. Que sera, sera.
But when bad things happen to everyone you love, you give up. You quit loving.
The wedding dress turned to paper. The smoke and flames engulfed everyone but me and yet I wore the tinder.
I sat straight up in my bed. The windows were open. The sea breeze had calmed to a gentle movement timed to the crashes of the tide. The rhythmic motion should have centered me. Instead, it made me further delve into the very notion of life’s rhythms and the messages hidden in the dream.
There was a new twist to my Visconti Curse that gnawed at my stomach lining. I had adored the runway model. And I loved and respected Dhurra. They were both dead.
I deplored the ruthless and greedy plastic surgeon. I hated the pedophile priest. They, too, were dead.
What had changed? Was the curse now attaching itself to anyone I felt any emotion toward? Good or bad?
THE NEXT MORNING I asked Geoff to meet me at a local café. He had yet to sit down before I started drilling him. What had I done out there with the snake in the middle of the desert and with his dead grandmother’s voodoo potion in my hands? He hadn’t exactly given me instructions on snake encounters and voodoo potions. Sure as hell didn’t tell me anything about spitting in my friends’ faces. I acted as if I’d rehearsed the scene twenty times before. I knew exactly what to do. Somehow.
He simply stated, “My grandmother. That’s all you need to know. She journeyed with you.”
WHILE TWO OF MY head writers had abandoned CoverBoy, three remained.
Gone was the electric charge of creative energy. Instead people shuffled into chairs, mumbled pleasantries and closed their mouths.
“We have to ramp up our stories. It’s either that or we might as well bail out right now,” I told them.
They fidgeted in their chairs. I ch
ose to nurse on a quad-shot of pure caffeine.
My junior writer spoke first. “The article on podiatrists and cut off toes got us lots of traffic. And no death threats. We’re on the right track.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Let’s talk about traffic. The slave-trafficking entering America. The girls, the slaves being shipped into the cities hosting big sports events. Play-off games. March Madness. The Super Bowl. Thousands of sex slaves right here in America.
“Don’t tell me we’re back off to Afghanistan?” Sukie whined.
“I said America. And that means roundtrip tickets to Toledo.”
GABRIELLE CRISCIONE steadied both her thoughts and her carving knife. The thick venison on her cutting board needed to be sliced razor thin, for her guests would expect nothing less of her.
She focused on the task at hand, with no remorse for the sick sonuva bitch. How many names had he burned through? Hell, he may be her second cousin, but he would always be a Judd. The Judd’s and the Criscione’s family tree intertwined the branches of wickedness cultivated by immorality and a vicious greed.
It made her sick.
Chapter Sixty-Three
The Fall of Falls
STERLING CALLED ME at 10:30 the following morning. Her voice rattled off in a distant stream of consciousness. Clearly, her throat sounded strangled as if wrapped in leather boot laces. One word and deep gasps. Another sentence, inaudible, with garbled words choked by tears.
“It’s Dad. He’s not in yet.”
“He’s not at the store?”
“No. I mean yes,” she cried.
I knew instantly why panic registered. Her father always arrived at Falls & Falls at precisely 9:00 a.m., even though the jewelry store didn’t open its doors for business until ten. That, and the fact he had undergone two major heart surgeries in the past eighteen months provoked good cause for alarm.
“Theresa said Dad wanted her in early to inventory some new loose diamonds.”
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