Closely Akin to Murder

by Joan Hess

  “Would you be quiet!” I snapped at Chico, then sent the car skidding around yet another corner. The headlights were no longer visible, but they would be before too long. The only exit from the development was through the gate. It was possible I’d achieved the minor advantage because they stopped to let one of the men out of the car. Unfortunately, they both had lethal weapons. I had a nail file. In a showdown, Chico would be as ineffectual as a faculty advisor.

  I cut off my headlights as I circled around the boundary of a cul-de-sac. There was nothing to be done about the telltale brake lights, however, except reduce my speed to avoid using the brakes. The rain that I’d been cursing provided some camouflage; our hunters would have to be within a matter of yards to spot us.

  Which might give me time to find the trailer, and more specifically, the barn beyond it.

  I told Chico about the men, then said, “You have two choices. You can get out of the car right now and go hide in the desert—or you can help me look for the trailer. The road to the barn’s not paved, so they might not notice it in the dark. That will give us a chance to alert Beatrice and Maisie. They don’t have a telephone, but they do have rifles.”

  Chico sat up only far enough to peek over the dashboard. “Who were they?”

  “Your friends, not mine. They both had guns and they acted as if they knew who was in this car.” I coasted around a corner and saw the trailer. “The road’s behind it, right?”

  “Just past it,” he said, kneeling on the seat in order to look out the back. “I don’t see them.”

  “Well, I don’t see the road and I don’t want to turn on the headlights,” I said. “You’ll have to tell me how to get to the barn. I don’t want to stray off the road and run over a cactus.”

  He stuck out a bony finger. “Turn here and keep going in that direction. The barn’s about a quarter of a mile farther. Maybe it’d be better to stop and go knock on the door.”

  I looked at the road. “Here they come. I don’t want to get caught outside the trailer. We’ll hide the car in the barn and come back on foot.” I yelped as the car hit a puddle and chocolate-brown water blanketed the windshield, momentarily eliminating visibility (which wasn’t all that good to begin with; I do not recommend driving in the desert at night without headlights). Reminding myself to keep my foot off the brake, we bounced down an incline.

  “Are you sure we’re on the road?” I asked in what might have been a somewhat churlish voice.

  He craned his neck to look behind us. “They went by the trailer and turned. Maybe this idiotic idea of yours is working.”

  We hit a particularly vicious hole. Once I’d gotten the car back under control, I said, “Idiotic? Would you prefer to walk back to the pavement and ask the nice gentlemen for a lift to the freight yard? I’d be delighted to stop and let you out.”

  “There’s the barn. I’ll open the doors so you can pull the car inside.”

  I waited while he did so, then drove into the barn and cut the engine. “Do you hear anything?” I asked him as I came to the barn door.

  “All I hear is rain, and I don’t see any lights. We ought to be safe for the time being.”

  I’d taken my flashlight out of my purse, and now I did a cursory examination of our hideout. It had served as a storage room in its later years; there were boxes of junk, tires, machinery parts, and a pile of rusted tools.

  “We’d better wait for a while,” I said, snapping off the flashlight. “If one of the men stayed at the gate, he’ll know we’re still somewhere in the development.” I recalled Chico’s remark about rats. “I’m going to sit in the car. If you prefer to sit elsewhere, feel free to do so.”

  He ignored my acerbic suggestion and climbed back in the car. “What did the men look like?”

  “The lights were blinding. I saw their silhouettes and their guns.” I rubbed my neck, hoping to ease muscles that were harder than steel cables. “I don’t understand how Farias could have known to send them here to find you. He’d have to know where Beatrice lived, as well as the fact that you’d met her at Las Floritas. I’m convinced she sent him a substantial amount of money after Oliver’s estate was dispersed, but she wouldn’t have included directions to her house.”

  “He has contacts.”

  “But this is absurd,” I said as I rolled down the car window and took a deep breath. The air in the barn was damp and musty, but an improvement over that emanating from the passenger seat. “There’s no way those men could have known that you were at the Tricky M, but they recognized my rental car.”

  Chico took the jar of peanut butter out of his backpack and stuck his finger in it. “Maybe they were your friends, after all.” He transferred a dollop of peanut butter to his mouth, noisily sucked his finger, then thrust the jar at me. “Want some?”

  The combination of body odor and peanuts was too much. I got out of the car and perched on the fender, careful to keep my feet well off the barn floor. Chico’s blithe assertion could be true, I thought with a shiver. The men had seen me behind the steering wheel; they hadn’t seen Chico. Either they wanted me—or they knew Chico was in the car. Both scenarios suggested that they’d been tipped off.

  Tipped off by the two women in the trailer, obviously. One of them had driven by the model home, seen my car in the driveway, and continued to the nearest available telephone. But had I said anything to them to imply I’d encountered Chico in Acapulco?

  “When you arrived here, did you tell Beatrice and Maisie about me?” I called.

  “I may have said something about a reporter wanting to talk to people involved with Oliver Pickett’s death,” he said indistinctly. “Your name may have come up.”

  “Did Jorge Farias’s name come up, too?”

  “You sure you don’t want some peanut butter? It’s high in protein.”

  “I want you to tell me exactly what you said to Beatrice and Maisie, Chico. If you’re not forthright, you’re going to find yourself tied to a cactus in plain view of the street. I’ll take my chances in the desert.”

  “Jeez,” he said as he got out of the car, “all you do is threaten me. At my age, I deserve a little respect.”

  “Tell me,” I said wearily.

  “It took three days to get here, and I’ll admit I may have been worse for the wear. I walked most of the way from Phoenix to here, except for a short ride in the back of a truck filled with hogs. Bea was in the trailer. She gave me a bucket of water, bar of soap, and a towel, and told me to leave my clothes in the garbage can. While I was getting cleaned up, she went into town and picked up some clothes at a thrift shop. Once I was presentable, she offered me food. I told her what had happened in Acapulco and how Farias was after me, then asked if she could loan me a small sum. She said it would take a couple of days to get the money together and offered to let me sleep here. You know the rest.”

  “I think I do,” I said. “She called Farias and told him where you were. She also told him I was asking her questions about the case. What I don’t know is why you and I are perceived to be so dangerous. Ronnie Landonwood killed Oliver. She confessed at the time. When I asked her if she was sure she committed the crime, she—”

  “When?” he croaked.

  “I talked to her earlier this evening before I came back here and had the pleasure of finding you making a sincere effort to steal my car. Considering the way things have been going ever since, I wish I’d let you have it.” I felt a drop of water hit my neck, and scooted over a few inches. “Why do you care when I spoke to Ronnie?”

  “I heard she died a long time ago. She caught some disease in prison and was taken to a hospital. Some guy who worked there as an orderly told Santiago, and he told me because . . . I don’t know, because I was American and he thought I might be interested.”

  “She was in a hospital, but she didn’t die,” I said.

  Chico leaned against the car, his back to me. After a long moment, he said, “The orderly must have been talking about another American girl. So w
hat’s she doing these days?”

  “She has a successful career.”

  “Did she get married? Have kids?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “She contacted me because someone made a blackmail demand. She had the crazy idea I could find the person and negotiate a deal to retrieve all the damning evidence of her involvement in Oliver Pickett’s death.”

  “Any luck?” he asked, looking at me.

  I couldn’t see his expression in the darkness, but he sounded more than minimally intrigued. “Do you know anything about it?”

  “Hey, I’m the one who thought she died in the middle of the 1970’s. Am I going to waste my time writing blackmail letters to the cemetery?” He got back in the car and slammed the door.

  I slid off the fender and went to the barn door to look out at the road. The rain had stopped, probably for good. No headlights were coming down the hill. I couldn’t see the trailer from this vantage point, so I had no idea if I’d mentally slandered Beatrice and Maisie—or if they were showing Farias’s men the road to the barn. The latter seemed likely.

  I pushed open the barn doors, then got in the car and started the engine. “We’re going to Phoenix,” I announced as I backed out of the barn. “I am not going to sit here and wait for those men to materialize and cause undue damage to my anatomy. I’ve spent more time with you in the last week than with my daughter. She’s cleaner, more entertaining, and slightly more willing to tell the truth. Do you want to get out here?”

  Chico clutched his backpack to his chest. “I just want to go to Canada. Will you make sure I can go to Canada?”

  “Sure,” I said, lying through my teeth. I headed back up the non-road, crunching rocks and endangering whatever species were endangered in this environment. I was fairly certain that I qualified as one of them (homo snoopiens).

  As I’d suspected, the car was parked in front of the trailer and lights were on inside. Maisie’s convertible was gone, but Beatrice’s truck was there. I eased off the gas pedal and let the car coast to minimize the sound of the engine.

  “Watch the door,” I said to Chico. I was going to elaborate when a fist rapped against my window.

  Startled, I inadvertently hit the brakes. Beatrice’s face hovered on the opposite side of the glass, distorted by the angular streaks of rain. The overall effect was ghoulish, to put it mildly, and all I could do was stare as she twirled her finger at me.

  “What the hell!” gasped Chico.

  My sentiments, too. I rolled down the window. “What do you want?”

  “Please let me in your car!” she said urgently. “We’ve got to get away from here before they come back. I was on my way to the barn when I heard you coming. Please, help me.”

  The more the merrier, I told myself as I gestured at the back door. “Get in, then.”

  She threw herself across the seat. “Drive, Claire. They’ll be back any minute.”

  I turned onto the street, drove a block, and then switched on the headlights. We flew past the model home, under the railroad ties, and out to Old Madrid Road at what may have been a somewhat reckless speed.

  “I don’t see them,” Chico reported.

  “They won’t come after us,” said Beatrice, sounding much calmer. “I threw the distributor cap in the desert and yanked out some wires. They’ll have a helluva long walk back to town. Hope it rains all the way on the bastards!”

  I slowed down, and after a quick glance in the rearview mirror, permitted myself a deep sigh. “Okay, Beatrice, explain. Where’s Maisie?”

  “She went into town a couple of hours ago, and hasn’t come back. I was kinda surprised.”

  “Did she go in order to make a telephone call?” I asked. “To Jorge Farias, for instance?”

  “Why would you say something cockeyed like that?” she replied. Conviction was missing.

  “Because two of his men are looking for Chico, and they have a description of this car. I don’t believe in coincidences, Beatrice—I prefer a more mundane cause-and-effect explanation. The men were following someone’s instructions. Someone issued those instructions. In order for someone to issue those instructions, he had to have been apprised of the situation.”

  There was no response from the backseat. I listened to Chico’s ragged wheezes and kept an eye on the rearview mirror as we continued along the road.

  Chico at last figured out what I’d implied. “She betrayed me?”

  I smiled at the incredulity in his voice. “I suppose there’s no honor among thieves anymore. I ask you, what’s the world coming to if you two can’t trust each other? The next thing you know, used car salesmen will be setting back odometers and televangelists will be making promises they can’t keep.”

  “Let’s not get personal,” he said, then turned around to look at the figure cowering next to the door. “I told you that Farias was after me. Why would you tell him where I was?”

  “Four days ago, one of his men came out to the trailer and gave me a number to call if you showed up,” she said. “I was too frightened to ignore it, especially after Claire came sniffing around like a coyote tracking a lame calf. The man also demanded a description of this car, along with the license plate. I was too discombobulated to write it down, but Maisie got a good look at it to night and went to a pay phone to pass it along.”

  We were nearing Phoenix. I considered heading for the police department with my two passengers, but I had not one iota of proof that they’d done anything illegal. Chico might be detained while a query was sent to Comandante Quiroz, who might prefer to leave Santiago’s case closed. As for Beatrice, she was a longtime resident and well known in the business community. Accusations by a bookseller from out of state might not be taken with any seriousness.

  I headed for the hotel. “What happened to night, Beatrice? You and Maisie did as ordered. You shouldn’t have had any reason to feel compelled to escape.”

  “They came to the door and said they’d lost your car, but were certain it was somewhere inside the Tricky M. I was about to tell them about the barn, but then they demanded to know where Maisie was and got real pissed when I said she hadn’t come back. One of them made me give him the keys to the truck. I realized they were worried about witnesses. I sent them off in the wrong direction and was starting for the barn when you drove up.”

  “We should have left you,” Chico said sourly.

  “Don’t push me,” she responded.

  “Snitch.”

  “Coward.”

  Listening to the two sixtysomethings squabble was no more bizarre than anything else that had happened lately. I let them hurl infantile insults as I drove across town and pulled into the hotel parking lot.

  “Bring your sleeping bag,” I said to Chico.

  “You were supposed to take me to the freight yard.”

  I got out of the car. “I don’t have any idea how many local thugs work for Farias, but I’m not going to drive all over Phoenix until one of them spots this car. You’re welcome to take a hike. Good luck, and adidós.”

  “Is there any way he knows where you’re staying?” Beatrice asked nervously as she got out of the backseat. She scanned the rows of cars as if expecting thugs to spring up like dandelions.

  “Did you tell him?” I said.

  “I had no way of knowing.”

  “Then he doesn’t know” I said as I started toward the stairwell that led to the balcony. “If you’re concerned, you can sleep in the car, take off with Chico, or stand there and twitter like the star of an aviary. It’s well past midnight and I’m going to bed.”

  Once inside the room, I felt as though I were back in a college dormitory. Chico rolled out his sleeping bag, flopped down, and began to snore; the sound reminded me of a cropduster’s plane. Beatrice grumbled at the sight of the king-sized bed, then stripped to her underwear and crawled beneath the bedspread. Her snores were as deafening as those from the floor.

  I would have paced if I wouldn’t have stepped on Chico. Was I babysitti
ng victims or perpetrators? It was by far the goofiest position I’d put myself in, but there was no one else remotely responsible.

  All of a sudden the desire to be back home swept over me with such intensity that I found myself unable to swallow. I wanted Caron’s outrageous proclamations about Rhonda Maguire, I wanted Inez’s solemn consensus, and I even—a little bit—wanted Peter’s sarcasm. This heretofore unseen vulnerability sent me to the bathroom, where I wiped my eyes with a tissue and tried to interpret my expression in the mirror.

  “Here comes the bride?” I asked myself, feeling foolish but searching for some clue as to my true emotions. The phrase failed to do much of anything; I did not envision myself in a gossamer veil, nor did I see my eyes welling with sappy tears. Perhaps the current situation was less than conducive, I concluded.

  I was still pondering it when someone pounded on the door.

  “Open up!” a voice said sternly. “Police!”

  What I said under my breath warrants no mention.

  CHAPTER 14

  I must admit that the Phoenix Police Department’s interrogation room was an improvement over the one in Acapulco, but I still wouldn’t recommend it as a stop on the tour of scenic Arizona. The walls were dingy, the linoleum scarred, the amenities rudimentary. Having had little choice in the matter, I took a swallow of tepid coffee and numbly recited, “Please contact Lieutenant Peter Rosen of the Farberville CID. He’ll vouch for my intentions, if not my methods. That’s all I am willing to say until you provide with an attorney.”

  Sergeant Prowell was unamused, perhaps because he’d heard this several times. “Mrs. Malloy, don’t—”

  “It’s Ms.”

  “Ms. Malloy, you haven’t been accused of a crime. We’re only trying to determine what you’re doing in Phoenix and how well you were acquainted with the victim. No one has suggested you have a motive. A we want is some basis for your involvement.”