The other building was the Quartz Springs Cafe and General Store. There were always a lot of cars in the parking lot—a sign the food was good. Actually, they weren’t cars but trucks, belonging, Alex supposed, to ranchers in the outlying areas coming in for an early breakfast and to shoot the breeze.
Five trucks were parked nose-in to the cafe’s side wall, so big they dwarfed the white Volkswagen dune buggy in their midst.
Alex swerved into the parking lot, jounced across the rutted baked earth, a rooster tail of dust billowing out behind her.
The Volkswagen was parked under an enormous cottonwood tree. The sprawling shade was so dark it added to the camouflage. Alex got out and looked at it.
VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS. There could be two dune buggies in this part of the state with the same bumper sticker, but she doubted it.
Had Booker watched her at the canyon and then driven off before she came out? She’d damn well find out, and soon.
Anticipation lying in the back of her throat like acid, she marched toward the cafe.
Quartz Springs Cafe and General Store must have been built in the twenties, when people first took to the road in their automobiles. The building was rusty-brown, made entirely of small volcanic rocks cemented together. An overhang extended out to a gas-pump island, supported by two rock pyramids. The pumps looked as if they still worked, judging from the high price. A sign across the top of the building announced: QUARTZ SPRINGS CAFE AND GENERAL STORE—DRY GOODS—CURIOS—TURQUOISE INDIAN JEWELRY—HOME-COOKING.
A long bench rested against the front wall. One end was taken up by a dummy of an Apache: coarse black horsehair wrapped by a thick headband, long tunic shirt, breechcloth, knee-high moccasins. Two bluetick hounds sprawled under the bench, tongues lolling.
Heart beating wildly, Alex blinked against the strong sun. She found herself staring at the cement floor inlaid with the bottoms of old bottles—green, brown, filmy purple.
All her senses were heightened—the colors brighter, the sounds of crockery and silverware and voices coming from inside magnified to an almost unbearable level. In a minute, she would know.
She put her hand on the handle to the heavily meshed wire door with a red tin sign bearing the legend HOLSUM BREAD. She hesitated, wondering if she should confront this guy, or just see if she was right and play dumb.
She pulled the door open and walked in. A man in an ARIZONA FEEDS cap was just coming out, and they did a sidestep trying to get past each other. She caught the scent of aftershave and heavy sweat—an odious combination, especially because the cologne was Old Spice, a smell she’d never liked.
He whistled and the bluetick hounds fell into step with him. Alex wondered where she’d seen him before, and then remembered—he was the guy she and Nick had seen on the road near Maybelle’s. Although he’d been driving a truck then, she watched him leave. He wasn’t the owner of the Volkswagen.
Two men sat on stools at the counter. Even though their backs were to her, she could see they were too big to be Booker. They looked like ranchers. A family sat in the center of the room at an oilcloth-covered table. Three other men occupied a red vinyl booth by one of the windows. She recognized them as movie people. The broad-faced, red-headed, pony-tailed guy she recognized as the first assistant director, Barry something. He wore wire-rimmed octagonal sunglasses.
She wondered why they were here eating breakfast instead of in the convoy of movie vehicles that had left the hotel. She wondered if Booker Purlie was with them.
Behind the Jagged Impact group, Maybelle Deering sat near the window talking to a petite, slender Hispanic woman wearing an Arizona Game & Fish uniform.
No Booker. Unless he was in the general store or the bathroom. Feeling edgy, vaguely disappointed, Alex stepped down into the darker general store. A heavyset woman manned the counter.
Alex refused to relinquish the idea that Booker owned the VW. He must be in the bathroom.
She picked up a copy of The Mesquite, the local paper, and took the booth behind Maybelle. She could see the VW from the window. All she had to do was order breakfast and see who left in the car.
She ordered the Number Four, the huevos rancheros plate, and stifled the guilty voice inside. Trying to concentrate on the paper, but aware of every movement, Alex heard chairs scrape. She looked up and watched the family leave. They got into a big old GMC truck—the kind with the gas tank that would go up like a bomb if another car ran into it.
The food came. Still no sign of Booker. Alex checked her watch. Fifteen minutes, a long time to spend in the bathroom. She dawdled over her meal, watching as one cowboy at the counter left and then the other. She really didn’t expect to see either of them go to the dune buggy. Not when there were Ford and Chevy trucks out there.
The redhead, Barry-something, was staring at her. Maybe he was trying to place where he’d met her.
She dug her fork into the chorizo, but her hunger had turned to ashes.
He caught her eye and smiled.
Maybelle spotted her and hollered across the booth back, “Any luck? With the jaguarundi?”
“Uh no.”
“Want you to meet Cindy Gallego. She covers this area for Game & Fish.” Maybelle introduced Alex. “Alex here thinks there might be some truth to the rumors there’s a jaguarundi in one of those offshoot canyons in the Cascabels. Personally, I think she’s barking up the wrong tree, pun not intended.”
Alex laughed. “I probably am.” She leaned over the booth and shook Cindy Gallego’s hand. The tiny wildlife manager had a firm grip.
“Some of those canyons are pretty remote,” Maybelle said. “Ever heard of Kearney’s blue star? Only place in this range you can find that plant is a little canyon that takes oft’ west from Groves. You seen any on your travels?”
“It doesn’t sound like an area I’ve been to.”
“You narrow it down yet?”
Out of the corner of her eye Alex saw Barry, the first AD, wipe his lips with a napkin and get up. To get to the bathroom, he had to go by her booth. “I’m poking around in a couple of areas,” Alex said, trying not to look up as Barry-something brushed past her, briefly touching the top of the booth with one hand. She noticed a bracelet of expensive Navajo silver, freckles, nails cut to the quick. My God, she thought, do I suspect everybody?
Cindy Gallego was looking at her expectantly. Torn whether or not to report the exact location of the cat’s scratch to the Game & Fish officer, Alex let her reluctance win out.
Right now, she had thirteen photographs of something, but she didn’t know what. It could just as easily be another deer. If and when the time came, she would report it. Game & Fish were actively studying the habitats of the ocelot, jaguar, and jaguarundi and needed to know if there was one in the area.
“Join us,” Maybelle ordered. She wore a rusty, fringed, suede jacket with her jeans and ostrich boots that must have cost a fortune.
Alex declined politely, pointing at her food. After she sat back down, she heard them talking about the red-tailed hawk Maybelle was rehabilitating.
Barry came back and sat down.
“Well,” Maybelle announced at last, rising stiffly to her feet, “gotta go home and ride Bob.” She walked to the counter, paid, and stuck a toothpick into a gap in her big horse-teeth. As Maybelle pushed through the screen door, she glanced Alex’s way and touched the brim of her hat like a cowboy to a lady.
She walked straight to the Volkswagen and drove away in a curtain of dust and noise.
Perplexed, Alex stared after the retreating bug. Maybelle Deering. So it had been a coincidence. It made perfect sense now. Maybelle lived only ten miles from the canyon. She was a wildlife rehabilitator, licensed by the United States government. It was only natural she’d go to Groves Canyon. Someone might have called her to help them with an animal.
Relief drenched her. It wasn’t Booker following her. It wasn’t anyone at all. She’d become paranoid. Feeling expansive, she left a good tip and paid her bill.
It had all been her imagination.
And then she remembered the greeting card, and the world closed around her again like a vise.
He opened up the throttle, gave the Harley its head. The full-throated roar sang in his ears. Power, dizzying in its intensity, flowed through him like a muscular river.
He knew he should ditch it. He could buy another. But no other Harley on earth, no matter how expensive and powerful, could give him the kind of rush this one did. This Harley fit him like a glove, fit the new him, and the main reason it meant so much was precisely because of the way he’d acquired it.
He wasn’t exactly worried, anyway. He was a hell of a lot smarter than the cops.
The khaki desert plain stretched out ahead, submissive as a woman. The black ribbon of asphalt unraveled at mach speed.
He’d taken time from his busy schedule to go to the Harley store in Tucson. He’d bought all the gear—black leather jacket, leather pants that showed off his obviously substantial endowment, boots with chains. He knotted a bandana around his head, gypsy pirate style. Stopped short at a tattoo; his body was his temple.
He was so enamored with his new persona that he’d thrown his camo clothing in a dumpster in Palo Duro. Of course, he’d keep the truck and the survival equipment; he just might need to bivouac in the desert again.
What he needed was a biker chick. He imagined feminine arms around his waist. Women loved power by association. They didn’t like it for themselves, but they loved to be near it.
He bet the Harley would even impress the cold bitch.
At the thought of Alex Cafarelli, a brief cloud of unhappiness drifted across his sun. It wasn’t going the way he wanted and he couldn’t figure out why.
Maybe she didn’t know he was interested. Sometimes, God help him, he came off as kind of shy.
He knew he was getting too involved. The enormity of what he’d done—the sheer brilliance of it—should make him think twice before acting again and possibly spoiling everything. He hadn’t planned on this complication, but he’d been good for so long that he felt like having her. Maybe it was that lean panther body, the long dark hair. Sometimes he fantasized about her straddling him, bending over and sweeping those soft feathers of brown hair over his chest.
Good thing he hadn’t shot her in the canyon. You could kill anybody and get away with it, he’d proven that. But to control the mind, to be all-powerful …
A smile teased his lips. That kind of power was better than any drug.
Too shy, huh? We’ll see about that.
He’d do her up close and personal. He would toy with her the way a predator toys with its prey, tire it out, wear it down, run it like a rat in a maze ... and then, when she was reduced to begging, begging him, he’d decide whether she lived or died.
His mind returned to last night; it hadn’t been as much fun as he imagined Alex Cafarelli would be, but he’d tried to make it interesting. At the thought, his stomach quickened, like going over a dip in the road really fast.
But she wouldn’t let him go. She kept tugging at him with that self-confidence that attracted him and at the same time pissed him off. And so he gave himself up to the fantasy, pretending he was the emperor in the coliseum. Thumbs up?
Or thumbs down?
Only the wind knew the answer.
Ten
She was the Marilyn Monroe of the nineties.
—Ted Lang to People Magazine
The heavy sweetness of star jasmine ladened the air. The sounds of people splashing and laughing in the pool filtered in through the open door to Alex’s room, along with the strong afternoon sun. But she had eyes only for the photographs spread out on her bed.
Ten of the thirteen pictures featured a javelina and a skunk. Two appeared to have missed the subject altogether, although there was a dark patch at the edge of one that could be the cat. But it was the last photograph which thrilled Alex.
The photograph was underexposed. The cat’s back was to the camera, but it had turned its head slightly, so that she caught a profile and the shiny pinpoint of an eye.
The cat was dark and thin, smaller than an ocelot, the neck unusually long, an extension of the body. The head was long too, bullet-shaped, and the ear she could see appeared to be set way back on its head, like an otter’s.
Her excitement mounted. She pored over the photograph with her magnifying glass, trying to discern more.
A short coat. She thought she saw some ticking of the fur. The back was humped. It had been sniffing the scent.
The cat looked like the jaguarundi she’d seen at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.
It was enough to go on. Her mind raced ahead as her own cat—Molly? Kitty?—made a pass at her ankles and then jumped up on the bed. She had all the equipment to set up the blind, plenty of film, the tripods, the flashes—
The phone shrilled on the bedside table. Without thinking, she picked it up.
“Alex? This is Nick McCutcheon. I wanted to tell you what’s going on.”
For a moment she was disoriented. Going on?
“We believe Booker Purlie may have left the area. He didn’t report to the crew this morning. I’m going in later to see if I can get a search warrant for his trailer—since he’s missing and we know he threatened you.”
“You really think he’s gone?”
Nick paused. “I don’t think you should let your guard down by any means, but it looks that way. Maybe things got too hot for him.”
“What if it’s a trick? What if he’s just waiting for a time to ... ” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“It could be, but I don’t think so. My guess is he would’ve hung around, tried to get you to react to him. If he’s transferred his obsession from Caroline to you, he’d want to see if you responded favorably. He’d want you to love him back. That’s why we think he’s taken off. He’s scared, thinks we’re on to what he’s been doing.”
“But it’s still a guess, right?”
“You really should go back to Tucson. Get out of harm’s way, just in case.”
Alex stared at the photographs of the jaguarundi. “I can’t do that,” she said.
“Just a suggestion.” But Nick McCutcheon sounded annoyed.
“Does this mean you’re reopening the case?”
“Let’s say we’re actively seeking to question him. The handwriting on Caroline’s cards and yours match.”
“So he must have killed Caro.”
“Not necessarily. All it means is whoever was harassing Caroline has now started on you. For all we know, Caroline’s death was an accident and this is just an unlucky coincidence.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
There was another pause. “I know you told Officer Childers what happened, but could you tell me? How do you know the card’s from Booker?”
Alex told him.
“But he didn’t hand it to you?”
“He’s too much of a coward for that.”
“You seem to have his character down cold.” It didn’t sound like a compliment.
“You think I’m jumping to conclusions?”
“I’m just trying to keep an open mind. From what I’ve seen of his interview, he’s anything but sneaky. The guy has delusions of grandeur. He can’t seem—or doesn’t see the need—to control himself
“What control does it take to scrawl on a card and leave it in someone’s book?”
“I don’t know. At any rate, before we can do anything further we’ll have to find him. I’ll keep you posted.”
When Alex hung up the phone, she tried to tell herself that Deputy McCutcheon was probably right and Booker Purlie had taken off. She stared at the photograph, thinking of the long, lonely nights she’d most likely be spending in the canyon. The blind was basically just a camouflage tent—not something she could lock and feel safe behind.
“Here, kitty kitty,” she called to the cat, who was sitting in the window looking out at the pool. “Puff
, come here.”
The cat remained where she was, her disdain for the name obvious.
She set up the blind the following morning. She would leave it up for the next couple of days and hope the jaguarundi would get used to it, consider it a new part of its habitat.
She hadn’t seen signs of human beings that deep in the canyon, but worried that someone might notice the blind and investigate. There would be a lot of expensive equipment out there.
Normally, she didn’t worry. She was always close by, but the idea of spending more nights than she had to out there ...
She was still scared.
It took her the better part of the day to prepare the blind, setting up the camouflaged dome tent the way she wanted it, across from a fallen sycamore tree not far from where she’d left the scent. The sycamore trunk looked like a lady’s plump white arm. it would make an excellent contrast to the dark jaguarundi. She lugged two tripods in and set them up at strategic places to light the cat if—when—it came. She’d mount flashes on them later. She set up a portable chair inside the blind.
Lugging the tripods up there had worked up a sweat. The trip back to the hotel was easy—nothing to carry. She stopped at the hotel desk to pay for the next few days, but the clerk told her the room tab was being picked up by the production company. Not being independently wealthy, Alex left it at that.
The first thing she saw when she opened the door to her room was the bouquet of yellow roses sitting on the wooden dresser.
Delight was followed quickly by fear as the darker meaning dawned on her. No one sent her flowers. Not her ex-husband. Not her parents, who liked their flowers alive and in the ground. Besides, she doubted there was an FTD franchise in the remote Tibetan village in which they were staying.
It wasn’t anywhere near her birthday. She stood in the doorway, the cat making passes at her ankles and swishing its feather tail back and forth.
The yellow petals trembled in the breeze blowing through the window. Beautiful, but toxic. At last, she closed the door and walked over to them.
The Desert Waits Page 11