Minor in Possession

by J. A. Jance

  Ralph nodded. “Fine,” he said.

  She led us into the restaurant, which turned out to be an odd mixture of Southwestern-American and something else, Continental probably, although I wouldn’t know Continental for sure if it got up and hit me smack in the face. The whole place was light and airy, with white walls and tall open-beamed ceilings. There appeared to be a series of several small, intimate dining rooms, each highlighting some piece of original artwork. A number of other tables were already occupied with parties of early diners, some of whom had drinks in hand although no sign of a bar was in evidence.

  Rhonda Attwood was seated in the first room, talking animatedly to a tuxedo-clad man I assumed was our waiter. He shook hands with Ralph, introduced himself to me as Francis, and then turned back to Ames.

  “The lady and I have been discussing wines. She says she’s never tried Le Neilleur Du Chai.”

  Ralph beamed at Rhonda. “Good choice. That will be perfect, Francis. Is it ’83?”

  “Of course,” Francis replied.

  He started away from the table. Assuming he was our waiter, I wanted to catch him before he left. “I’ll have coffee,” I said.

  Francis nodded. “I’ll send your waiter with some right away.”

  “I thought he was the waiter,” I said to Ralph.

  “Oh, no. Francis is the sommelier and sometime maitre d’,” Ralph answered with a smile. “He and Vincent have been together through several incarnations of local fine dining establishments. As chef, Vincent plays the starring role, but always with Francis backing him up.”

  Ralph focused on Rhonda. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” she answered. Her sleek hair, brushed back from her face, glowed in the muted, indirect lighting. She was wearing a softly belted knit dress that showed off her figure. There was nothing about Rhonda Attwood that looked the part of a grieving mother. And nothing about the evening had the feel of planning a funeral.

  A spiffy waiter in a crisply pleated white shirt and black bow tie appeared moments later. Without having to ask who was who, he set a full cup of coffee in front of me. Before the waiter walked away, Francis was there as well. With suitable pomp and circumstance, he administered the Cabernet Sauvignon, first ceremoniously sampling it with a spoon before offering a sip to Ames and finally pouring the two glasses. Maybe that’s why I never cared much for wine—it always involved too much ritual and not enough drinking.

  I sat there unnecessarily stirring my black coffee and waiting for them to get on with it. Despite the fact that this was supposedly a dinner in honor of my birthday, the conversation between Ralph and Rhonda made me feel very much like the proverbial fifth wheel.

  Eventually, Francis withdrew only to be replaced by Vincent himself, a brawny Swiss ex-patriot who believed in the old-fashioned, hands-on, innkeeper’s approach to running a restaurant. He arrived at the table wearing his chef’s hat and an eye-watering perfume of mesquite smoke.

  Rubbing his hands together in anticipation and fixing Rhonda Attwood with a blazing smile, he said to Ralph, “So this is the lady you were telling me about?”

  Ames looked pleased. “She certainly is, Vincent. Allow me to introduce Rhonda Attwood.”

  What followed was a long discussion of art and artists, of shows and galleries and commissioned paintings—things about which the three of them seemed to know a great deal, while I knew less than nothing. Rhonda Attwood flushed with obvious pleasure that Ralph Ames had such an extensive working knowledge of her artistic progress. The enthusiastic sales pitch Ralph was giving Vincent made me wonder if his attorney relationship with Rhonda Attwood involved a commission.

  Art and artists have never been my strong suit. My only artistic achievement, drawing stick figures, went out of vogue between second and third grades. From then on art classes left me cold. The ability to draw a lifelike landscape or seascape or face or even an orange strikes me as something akin to witchcraft.

  Talking about all those things is even more remote. Instead of paying much attention, I concentrated on watching the people coming into the restaurant. Vincent’s was obviously a place to see and be seen, where Phoenix fashion plates of both sexes sized one another up and kept score. This was almost, but not quite, as boring as the art talk. I was only too happy when some crisis in the kitchen summoned Vincent away from our table.

  “So what’s good here?” I asked, picking up my menu and trying to turn the conversation back to a subject I could handle.

  “You didn’t tell me today was your birthday,” Rhonda remarked reprovingly.

  “It slipped my mind,” I replied.

  My answer sounded unnecessarily curt, even to me. Ames’ raised eyebrow sent me into retreat. “After forty there’s not much reason to keep track,” I added lightly. “So what’s good here?”

  “Everything’s good,” Ralph offered smoothly. “It all depends on what you like.”

  I looked at my menu, but looking didn’t help. It was in French, most of it. The only word that looked vaguely familiar was “tamale,” and that was only on the appetizer list.

  “I didn’t think tamales were French,” I objected.

  Ralph smiled. “They’re not, but these are made from duck and they’re wonderful.”

  With his selection already made, Ralph lowered his menu and caught Rhonda’s eye. “So, did you reach her?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you so much,” Rhonda murmured. She took a delicate sip of her wine.

  I had the distinct feeling I was once more being left out of the conversation. “Reach who?” I questioned.

  Ralph didn’t answer but Rhonda did. “Michelle,” she said. “Michelle Owens. When I called him this morning, Ralph here very kindly agreed to try to help me locate her. He’s very efficient. By this afternoon it was a fait accompli.”

  In view of Rhonda’s and my conversation from the night before, the idea of her having anything to do with either Michelle or Guy Owens made me very uncomfortable. “Ralph helped you do that?”

  Rhonda nodded. “Owens is stationed at Fort Huachuca. He lives in a town called Sierra Vista just outside the military base. It’s down in the southeastern part of the state.”

  I turned from Rhonda to Ralph. Dismay must have registered all over my face. Ralph shrugged as though my concern was totally uncalled for.

  “When Rhonda told me that Michelle and Joey had been…well, involved, and that perhaps the girl would be interested in attending the funeral, it seemed only reasonable. Under the circumstances, I think Rhonda’s being very civilized to take Michelle’s feelings into consideration. The funeral’s Monday afternoon, by the way,” he added for my benefit. “At St. John’s Episcopal, right here on Lincoln Drive.”

  I glanced at Rhonda Attwood. She was gazing back at me innocently, as if daring me to refute any of what Ames had said.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but did Rhonda happen to mention to you that Michelle’s father, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens, is quite possibly a suspect in the investigation into the death of her son?”

  Naturally, the waiter chose that exact moment to return to our table. “Are you ready to order?”

  “Not yet,” Ames told him, waving him away. Only when the waiter was out of earshot did Ames answer my question.

  “Actually, Rhonda did mention it. I checked with Delcia before I gave out the number.”

  “Delcia?” I asked, uncertainly, feeling more and more like an outsider with every passing moment.

  “You know, Delcia. Detective Reyes-Gonzales in Prescott. I talked to her early this afternoon. She said that she didn’t have a problem with Rhonda inviting Michelle to the funeral.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, messing around in a homicide investigation like that?”

  “We’re not messing around in any investigation, Beau,” Ames countered. “Inviting Michelle Owens to attend Joey Rothman’s funeral has nothing whatsoever to do with his murder. Is she going to come, by the way?” he asked, turning to Rhonda.r />
  “If she can,” Rhonda replied. “At least that’s what she told me on the phone. She seemed touched that I had bothered to call. According to her, she hasn’t heard a word from JoJo and Marsha. I don’t expect she will, either.”

  My brief warning to Ames on the way into the restaurant hadn’t included Rhonda Attwood’s exact words about intending to “take out” the people responsible for her son’s death, so he wasn’t playing with an entirely full deck, but I was still astounded at the conversation shifting back and forth across the table between them.

  I had the sickening feeling that Ralph Ames was being royally suckered, neatly led into the trap, and there I sat, watching but helpless to derail the process. Sentence by sentence Rhonda Attwood deftly plied him for information, asking innocent-sounding questions that drew him further and further into what I saw as her own private vigilante agenda.

  It galled me to watch Ralph Ames, my trusty, sophisticated, man-of-the-world attorney who should have known better, be led like a lamb to the slaughter, smiling and laughing all the while. After all, it wasn’t the first time. For either one of us.

  “What about Michelle’s father?” I asked ingenuously. I folded my arms across my chest and waited to see how Rhonda would respond to that one.

  “He wasn’t invited,” she responded carefully.

  “I’ll just bet he wasn’t.”

  There was a sudden flash of anger in Rhonda Attwood’s eyes, one that wasn’t masked by the flattering candlelight. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  Our waiter reappeared as if on cue. It seemed like a deliberate plot. “Are you ready now?” he asked.

  Together, Ralph and Rhonda settled for something that roughly translated into mesquite grilled rack of lamb seasoned with thyme and garlic and served with jalapeño jelly and a still-burning sprig of rosemary. I ordered the Cornish game hen. Ralph insisted that we each try one of the appetizers—the tamales, cucumber soup, and red and yellow bell pepper soup.

  The food was fine, but I would have enjoyed the dinner a whole lot more if I could have eaten without the sense that the artistic bullshit that passed for conversation around our table was nothing but a convenient camouflage for Rhonda Attwood’s keg of emotional dynamite.

  The fuse was already lit. The best I could hope for was to keep it from blowing sky-high and taking an unsuspecting Ralph Ames right along with it.

  CHAPTER

  12

  While Rhonda and Ralph continued to talk about art and things artistic, I contented myself with people watching. The dining room grew crowded and noisy with fashion-plate people, including several who were evidently deeply entrenched in city politics. The women, dressed to the nines, were there to see and be seen. The men were there because the women were.

  Our table afforded me an almost unobstructed view of the small grill area where no fewer than six men dove back and forth in a complicated ballet that was almost comic to watch although I have no quarrel with the quality of the food that ultimately ended up on our platter-sized plates.

  Dessert, an unpronounceable crème brûlée, consisted of three flavors of custard served in sweet miniature taco shells and topped with a rich raspberry sauce. Ames must have cued someone about my birthday, because my chocolate-glazed plate arrived with a lit candle stuck right in the middle of one of my custards. Thank God they didn’t light all the candles I deserved.

  I kept waiting for Rhonda to steer the conversation back to her son’s murder, but that didn’t happen, nor was there any further reference to plans for Joey’s funeral. Two and a half hours after we had been seated, we were waiting outside for the valet to retrieve our cars. He brought the Fiat first. As Rhonda was getting in, she turned back to Ralph.

  “Thank you for getting me the room,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “It’s so convenient, but…”

  If she was going to voice an objection, Ralph waved it away. “Don’t worry about it. It’s my pleasure.”

  “What room?” I asked, once Rhonda had roared out of the parking lot past a waist-high sign that through some inexplicable coincidence said “Beaumont Properties.”

  “At La Posada,” Ralph said. “The manager and I are good friends. We trade favors back and forth all the time. It’s just up the street from the church. I told her to stay there until after the funeral.”

  The drive to Sky Harbor in Ames’ Lincoln was thorny. When I tried to recap some of what Rhonda had told me the night before, Ralph listened politely enough. When I finished, he brushed aside my concerns, telling me I was completely off base, out of my head. When I hinted that he might be losing his objectivity in regard to Rhonda Attwood, he came as close as Ralph Ames ever comes to losing his cool.

  “Look,” he said finally, sounding somewhat annoyed. “I appreciate your concern, Beau, but give me a little more credit than that. Right now Rhonda Attwood is a woman beset by numerous legal difficulties. She also happens to be a gifted artist whose work I’ve admired for some time. Certainly I jumped at the chance to be of service, but just because I’ve decided to help her, don’t assume there’s a whole underlying agenda for either one of us, because there isn’t.”

  “So you’re not interested in her personally?”

  “Professionally, not personally.”

  “And you’re not worried that she might try to draw you into the fray?”

  “I don’t believe there’s going to be any ‘fray,’ as you put it, but I’ll take your warning under advisement.”

  That was the best I could do.

  At the Alamo office near the airport, Ames started to park and come inside with me, but I told him not to bother, that wouldn’t be necessary. Promising to see him at home, I trudged into the office prepared to face down the folks at the rental desk. They treated me with an air of less than cordial distrust, regarding me as an auto-renting leper who, however inadvertently, had managed to involve one of their precious Grand AMs in a homicide investigation.

  A supervisor, not the same one I had talked to earlier on the phone, was summoned from a back room. She subjected me to a lengthy and public lecture on my general automotive character and deportment. The lecture concluded with a recitation of rental agreement no-nos, the strongest of which was a forcefully worded prohibition against taking my Subaru anywhere into the wilds of Old Mexico. I received my keys only after promising, cross my heart, that I had no such evil intention.

  Relieved to escape the office, I retreated to the welcome solitude of the Subaru, even though, compared to the luxury of Ames’ Lincoln with its car phone and liquid-crystal dashboard instrumentation or to my own Porsche, the modest four-wheel-drive station wagon represented a big step downward. It seemed gangly and awkward, but it still beat walking.

  As I left the airport area, my first inclination was to drive directly back to Ralph’s place, but by the second stoplight, I rethought that plan. I had slept away most of the day, and it was far too early for bed. I certainly didn’t want to resume my non-conversation with Ralph Ames regarding Rhonda Attwood’s questionable intentions.

  My second inclination was to turn in at the very next HAPPY HOUR sign on the right-hand side of the street and buy myself a drink, a double, but the place turned out to be a topless joint in an exceedingly marginal neighborhood. Repelled, I kept on driving. Besides, did I really want to stop there with the dust of Ironwood Ranch still sticking to the heels of my shoes? That thought brought me abruptly back to the business with Calvin and Louise Crenshaw.

  According to Ames, Louise herself was spreading the story that the snake in my cabin had somehow wandered in from the wild. She was, was she? Maybe it was time to see about that.

  I glanced at my watch and saw that it was only nine o’clock, still plenty of time to drive the seventy miles or so to Wickenburg and beard the lions in their cozy ranch-style den. With any kind of luck, I’d manage to see both of them at once. I turned left at the next intersection and headed west on McDowell, a major east-west arterial, figuring corre
ctly that eventually I’d run into Interstate 17 headed north.

  By ten-fifteen, I was parked in front of the Crenshaws’ one-level rambler, where both the porch light and several interior lights were on. The flickering glow of a television set told me someone was home. I rang the bell.

  Calvin, clad in a bathrobe and floppy slippers and wearing a sleepy yellow tabby cat draped across one shoulder, came to the door. He opened it and frowned when he saw who I was. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk. Can I come in?”

  He hesitated for a moment before stepping away from the door and holding it open. “I suppose.” It was hardly an engraved invitation. “What do you want?”

  “To talk,” I repeated. “With both you and Louise.”

  “She isn’t here,” he said.

  “When will she be back?”

  He shook his head. “Who knows? We don’t keep very close tabs on one another.”

  He shut the front door and padded back into the living room, moving carefully so as not to disturb the cat. I followed a few paces behind him. Calvin settled comfortably into a high-backed chair that made me homesick for my own leather recliner back home in Seattle.

  “Have a seat,” he said, motioning me onto the couch.

  The cat raised its head, blinked once or twice, then stood and stretched before climbing languorously down from its shoulder perch. In Calvin’s ample lap, it circled several times and then settled contentedly into a compact gold-and-orange-striped ball. The cat’s noisy purring could be heard all the way across the room.

  Calvin scratched the cat’s chin affectionately. “His name is Hobbes,” he said to me. “You know, like in the comics?”

  I didn’t know someone named Hobbes from a hole in the ground. “I don’t read the comics,” I explained. “I don’t read newspapers at all.”

  Calvin Crenshaw looked at me with one raised eyebrow and then he nodded. “I see,” he said. “So what is it you came here to talk about?”