Desert Noir (9781615952236)

by Webb, Betty

  Shuddering, I coasted the Jeep to a stop behind the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow someone, probably the chauffeur, was polishing.

  “You that detective they’re expecting?” he asked. A closer inspection showed that the man was that current Scottsdale status symbol, a chauffeur/bodyguard combo. He was young and tough-looking, with biceps the size of my thighs. Not that he needed them. Strapped to his hip was a hand-tooled holster, and peeking out of it was an evil-looking Glock, a clone of my old Scottsdale PD service revolver.

  Should I tell him I approved of his taste in guns? Instead, I just smiled. “Yes.”

  “They’re waiting for you out by the pool. I unlocked the gate for you.” He pointed along a tiled walkway.

  As I turned, he added, “Watch yourself in there.”

  When I looked back, he was tenderly stroking the Rolls’ fender, as if he hadn’t said anything.

  On that optimistic note, I headed down the walk, ducking around an overly aggressive bougainvillea bush whose thorns seemed intent on ripping my clothes off. Once past the bougainvillea, I had to turn sideways to edge between the cholla cacti that crowded the area, spines a-bristling. Why did rich people have such mean plants?

  As I let myself in the gate, the pungent odor of chlorine smacked me in the face. The Hyaths certainly weren’t taking any chances with that nasty old desert bacteria. What I saw when I rounded the corner of the house made me gag.

  Not content to merely own a pseudo-castle, at the back of the house the Hyaths had installed a tropical lagoon, complete with waterfall. A twenty-foot “mountain” composed of artificial granite rose above the bright turquoise water, spewing a silvery cascade.

  A hummingbird darted around the summit, a confused expression on its face. The bright red blossoms it kept poking its beak into were obviously artificial. At the side of the pool, two real banana palms bent solicitously over a gray-haired couple seated about eight feet apart on matching chaise lounges, shielding their patrician skin from the desert rays.

  The Hyaths pretended not to notice I was there.

  “I’m Lena Jones. I take it you’re the Hyaths?”

  Neither smiled, although Mr. Hyath eventually deigned to look in my direction. He had been cold over the phone, which wasn’t unreasonable since for all he knew I was still in the employ of the man accused of murdering his daughter. I hadn’t exactly been expecting an enthusiastic welcome. But this… I’d gotten warmer receptions raiding dogfights.

  Hyath looked to be in his early sixties. Although not actually handsome, he was slim and elegant with softly waved gray hair that could have been styled that very morning. His eyes were the color of his upscale pool but much less inviting.

  Clarice’s mother was a surprise. Rich women were usually face-lifted and bone-thin, but Eleanor Hyath’s face was lined and puffy, with dewlaps that could rival a basset hound’s hanging from her flat cheeks. Her body fared even worse. No designer swimsuit could disguise the rolls of fat around her waist or hide the cellulite on her thighs. Her stubby, un-manicured fingers were yellow with nicotine. One lit cigarette dangled from her mouth while another smoldered in the overflowing ashtray that sat on the wide, littered table. Unlike her husband’s seal-sleek mane, her own gray hair stood out in straw-dry clumps all over her head, looking like it hadn’t been washed or combed in days. A reaction to grief? As I drew closer, I could tell that she was drunk.

  “Nice job you’ve got, working for a murderer,” Eleanor Hyath slurred, her voice husky from booze and too many cigarettes.

  I eased myself onto a nearby deck chair, not that I’d been invited. Common courtesy was not the Hyath’s currency. “Look, as it stands right now, there may not be a good enough case against Kobe to convict him of your daughter’s murder, so the police are proceeding cautiously. I’m sure you don’t want him to go to trial and then get off, because he’d never be able to be tried for the same crime again. Not even if he eventually came right out and confessed.”

  She looked at me for a moment, trying to focus. She finally managed it. “Why not?”

  Her husband gave her a look iced with contempt. “Because of double jeopardy, Eleanor. In this country once someone’s been found innocent they can’t be tried again, not even if they confess to the crime at some later date.”

  Then he looked up at me and my own day got colder. “Regardless of all that, Miss Jones, I find this visit in the worst of taste. But since I agreed to see you, just ask us what you need to then do us the favor of going back to wherever you’ve come from.”

  Such as the rock he so obviously thought I lived under? “I’d like to speak to each of you separately.” “No.”

  This promised to be an interesting experience. I was about to ask a man if he’d had sexual relations with his daughter, while his drunken wife sat there listening to the whole thing. But, hey, it couldn’t happen to a nicer couple.

  I tried not to let my satisfaction show. “In that case, here we go, Mr. Hyath. Jay Kobe told me Clarice was getting ready to sue you for the pain and suffering your incestuous relations caused her when she was a child. He told me she’d already talked with an attorney and they were about to file in civil court.”

  He gave me a bleak look. “That’s certainly an interesting story, but rest assured, Miss Jones, Clarice wouldn’t have collected a dime.”

  His wife didn’t react at all and for a moment, I wondered if she’d heard. She simply took the half-smoked cigarette out of her mouth, flicked it into the pool, and lit another one.

  “Goddamn!” Hyath uncoiled from the chaise and plucked the sodden cigarette out of the pool. “Eleanor, must you be so disgusting?”

  Eleanor just kept puffing away.

  I was baffled by their reactions. “Is that all you’ve got to say about such a horrendous allegation?”

  The cigarette incident overwith, Hyath calmed himself again. “What else is there to say? You’ll either believe that story or you won’t, regardless of any protestations I may make. But I would like to warn you that if you spread this story around you’ll be facing a lawsuit of your own for slander. Now, is there anything else, Miss Jones?”

  I swallowed my anger. “I’d like to get an idea of what Clarice was like. Who her friends were. Her enemies.”

  Eleanor pulled the cigarette from her mouth and picked at a strand of tobacco hanging from her lip. “So you think my daughter had enemies.”

  Her husband looked at her briefly, then away again.

  “Everyone has enemies,” I said to Eleanor. “Especially when they’re as beautiful and accomplished as your daughter.”

  She sat up, barked a laugh and for a moment her eyes lost their dazed look. “Beautiful? Not before the cosmetic surgeons fixed her, she wasn’t. She had her father’s nose and my cheekbones. Believe me, without the magic of the scalpel she wouldn’t have won any beauty contests. Men wouldn’t have looked at her twice.” Then she settled back against the chaise, her cheeks glowing with spite.

  Clarice had enemies, all right. Her mother, for starters. I thought again about Kobe’s allegations of incest and how I had wondered what kind of mother would countenance such a situation. Now I knew.

  “Who were Clarice’s friends?”

  A smirk. “She didn’t have any.”

  Now Stephen Hyath came to life. “Eleanor—”

  She turned to him and snapped, “You call that art crowd trash she ran with friends?”

  He shrugged. “She liked them. They liked her.”

  Eleanor sneered. “Oh, like. ”

  I wanted to drown her. Instead, I cleared my throat and directed my next question to him. Clarice’s mother was a lost cause. “Perhaps you could give me the contact numbers for Clarice’s friends. Maybe she was open with them about whatever problems she was having.”

  His face was expressionless. “Problems? With what?”

  “Something that made her dead, Mr. Hyath.” Jesus, wasn’t anybody grieving for Clarice?

  Eleanor flicked another cigarette in
to the pool. Hyath leaned over the long table that separated him and his wife and punched at the beeper next to the ashtray. Seconds later, a wary-looking Hispanic maid joined us.

  “Clean that up.” Hyath pointed to the cigarette now decomposing in the pool. Then he pointed to his wife. “And when you’re through, clean her up. She smells.”

  Grabbing the beeper, he stood up and gestured for me to follow him. “I’ll give you a list of Clarice’s friends, but after that, I don’t want you to bother us again. Now come with me.”

  I hurried after him, eager to escape from the human train wreck by the pool.

  The interior of the house was even worse than the exterior, with no taste anywhere in evidence, just obscene amounts of money. Black marble tiled a living room the size of a football field. It was accented by rugs flayed from the bodies of zebras and polar bears, and in one horrifying instance, a Bengal tiger. A sheer glass coffee table in front of the white leather sofas was held up by two severed elephant’s feet.

  Somebody here had an unhealthy obsession with violence and death. Then I remembered who decorated the house.

  Alison.

  Not quite as grotesque as the dead endangered species—but trying hard—was a gallery off the main living room which housed a collection of pseudo-classical sculpture. I saw a copy of the Venus de Milo sans arms, the Athena Nike sans head, and scattered busts of almost a dozen Roman senators sans their entire bodies. It struck me that both rooms were decorated with pieces of bodies, not whole ones. Was this the way the Hyaths viewed people—as nothing more than a miscellaneous collection of body parts?

  “Nice house,” I lied.

  “It should be for what it cost me.”

  After a long hike though a hall lined by a gun collection that could have dwarfed the Arizona National Guard’s armory, we finally arrived at two massive bronze doors that opened onto a cavern-like den.

  “I’ve got her old address book in here,” he said.

  Alison apparently hadn’t waved her magic decorating wand in here. The dark brown carpeting that softened the floor was made even darker by wood paneling that looked like it had been ravaged from some primeval forest. More guns were mounted on the wall here, and they gleamed menacingly in the gloom. As I squinted around, Hyath switched on a desk lamp so dimly bulbed that I couldn’t help but wonder if all this darkness mirrored his heart.

  The only saving grace in the room was the large oil portrait of Clarice that hung on the wall facing the desk. Unlike the dismembered bodies in the living room and gallery, all of Clarice had been captured by the artist’s expert brush. She posed proudly in the desert sunlight, her dark hair offset by a pale pink dress, and matching tights and shoes. She was complete, glowing. She appeared to be around nine years old, with a hopeful, unshadowed face. Was this the age when her father started molesting her?

  Hyath rustled through a desk drawer and finally came up with an address book. “This was Clarice’s,” he said, tossing it to me.

  “Do you want me to return it?”

  “What for?”

  As a memento of your daughter, I thought. But voicing that sentiment was probably pointless. When it came to sentiment, the Hyaths were definitely twisted. “Fine. One more thing. Um, I’ve heard that Clarice lived on income from a family trust. Is that true? I know she didn’t make all her money from the Western Heart Gallery alone.”

  At first it looked like he wasn’t going to answer my question, but then he glanced across the room at Clarice’s portrait and his cold face softened. “Yes, there’s a trust, but each of my children is also an equal partner in Hyath Construction. I signed it over to them six years ago.”

  I blinked in surprise. I’d always thought Hyath Construction was solely owned by Stephen Hyath. I couldn’t help but wonder why he’d given it to his children.

  Out of guilt, perhaps?

  “And it’s remained a successful company, hasn’t it?”

  When he finally turned from the portrait, his eyes were wintry again. “Being good at business runs in the family. Now, I’m afraid you need to leave. I’m a busy man.” He pressed the button on the beeper. The maid wasted no time in responding. She had a towel draped over her arm. Presumably she was in the process of scrubbing Eleanor down.

  “Inez, please escort Miss Jones out. Tell Randall to make certain she leaves the property.”

  Inez nodded and led me outside where Randall the chauffeur/bodyguard stood waiting for me beside the now-gleaming Rolls. “I have to follow you down the hill, make sure you’re gone.” At least he looked apologetic.

  “Fine with me. But before I go may I ask you something?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. I need this job.”

  “You just answered my question.”

  I drove away, overcome with loathing for the Hyaths and their home, until it occurred to me that my parents—if I ever found them—might prove to be even worse.

  Chapter 9

  After my visit to the Hyaths, the Scottsdale Police Department seemed like Disneyland, even taking into account the two drunken teenagers sprawled on a curved bench inside the door. One had peed himself, the other had a nosebleed.

  “Hi ya, Lena,” said Sgt. Vic Falcone, a transplant from Chicago, who was the lucky man assigned to the front desk today. He’d been at my side the day I took the bullet that ended my police career and had kept his hand pressed against my severed artery until the EMTs arrived. They told me later that he’d been crying almost as hard as I’d been bleeding.

  Now he frowned. “What’s this I hear you been out gettin’ shot again?”

  “That story’s been greatly exaggerated, Vic. Just a graze, just a graze.”

  The frown didn’t let up. “You need to be more careful with yourself.”

  “My middle name—Careful.” I grinned, trying to lighten the mood. Like Kryzinski, Falcone had always been a nag.

  The grin worked and he mirrored my expression. “Other than that, how’s tricks?”

  “A lot more lucrative since I stopped working Van Buren,” I answered. The reference to Phoenix’s notorious Hooker’s Row earned the laugh I’d been fishing for. “Say, is Kryzinski in? He told me to stop by.”

  Vic waggled his eyebrows at me. “Doing house calls now, are ya?”

  I waggled back and twitched an imaginary cigar. We were both big Marx Brothers fans.

  He bared coffee-stained teeth in appreciation. “We miss ya around here. Them new broads on patrol ain’t half as pretty as you.”

  I laughed. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls, you sexist pig, you.”

  Now he twitched his own imaginary cigar. “Only the blonds, Lena. Hey, ya know where Kryzinski’s office is. One of the rookies’ll take you up. I gotta babysit for the Katzenjammer Kids here ’til their parents arrive.”

  I blew him a kiss as a fresh-faced rookie trying to look scary used his pass to open the electronically locked door to the inner sanctum. He led me down the hall to the elevator, our footsteps whispering along the expensive blue-gray carpet. As in the rest of the city’s municipal buildings, the police department’s architect had spared no expense in creating a tasteful work environment. In fact, a casual visitor to the building would swear he was in an insurance office until he came to the glassed-in case that held the collection of guns, rifles, and assault weapons we’d confiscated during raids. There were enough in the display to stock a small army.

  The rookie rode with me up to Kryzinski’s lair without saying a word. I didn’t think it was because he was unfriendly, just that his voice was still changing and he was afraid it would crack. They seemed to be hiring them younger and younger these days.

  The elevator stopped and as he ushered me down the hushed hallway past the communications room, old friends of mine from the Violent Crimes Unit rushed from their pods, demanding to know why I was walking around so soon after being shot. I had to tell my story again and couldn’t help grinning as I noticed the rookie’s face begin to pale. He probably hadn’t yet d
ealt with anything other than Iowa grannies running stop signs in their Winnebagos. But his time would come, and I felt a moment’s pity for him.

  After I satisfied everyone’s curiosity, we continued our progress to the glassed-in office at the back of the VCU, where I was finally able to wave goodbye to my guide. Glancing through the glass, I saw Kryzinski hunched over his laptop. He was wearing a tan Western suit with chocolate piping, a black string tie completing his ensemble. Since he bulged slightly less than usual, I surmised that he was beginning to buy his clothes in larger sizes or that the Police Chief had finally convinced him to go on a diet. As I watched, Kryzinski hurled an oath at the laptop’s monitor. It didn’t deign to talk back.

  “I love a man who loves his computer. It really makes me hot.”

  With a start, Kryzinski looked up from the laptop. His expression would have scared Geronimo. “Jesus Christ, Lena, you out walking the streets again?”

  “That’s funny. I just had the same conversation with Falcone. You cops have such dirty minds.”

  The scowl deepened. “Quit fartin’ around and do yourself a favor. Go back home and get some rest. You just been shot, for Christ’s sake.”

  I eased through the door. Regardless of the laptops that sat on every Scottsdale police officer’s desk, Kryzinski’s office was always a mess, with piles of paperwork accumulated on every conceivable surface—the desk, the chairs, the scarred lamp table, even the floor. The inspectors from Rural Metro Fire Department were always threatening to ticket him.