by J. A. Jance
An anxious white-haired and white-collared minister arrived about one-fifteen. He gazed at the massed flower delivery vans with a frown of disapproval. I caught up with him as he turned back toward the church preparing to go inside.
“Excuse me,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to be officiating at the Rothman funeral this afternoon, would you?”
He rounded on me. “What do you want?”
I backed away, put off by his surly attitude. “My name is Beaumont, J. P. Beaumont. I’m a friend of Rhonda Attwood’s. You haven’t happened to hear from her, have you?”
“The last I heard, Mrs. Attwood was staying at La Posada, but all the arrangements have been made through Mr. and Mrs. Rothman. The present Mrs. Rothman,” he added meaningfully.
He turned and started away from me before I quite realized what had been said. “You said Mrs. Attwood was staying at La Posada? How did you know that?”
His voice hardened. So did his eyes. “My good man, the Rothmans are good parishioners of mine. If you have any questions, I suggest you address those questions to them.”
With that he turned on his heel and stalked away. The message was clear. JoJo and Marsha Rothman’s churchly contributions were paying his wages and keeping the building fund afloat. Rhonda Attwood’s weren’t. So much for Christian charity. And beyond that, if the minister had known where Rhonda Attwood was staying, any number of other people could have found out that information as well.
It was another bit of the puzzle to chew on.
By two o’clock the vans were gone. The altar area inside the dimly lit church was banked with flowers. Only in the kitchen and adjoining fellowship hall did the feverish activity of preparation still continue. A party, I thought, a party after the funeral. I’ve never understood those, and probably never will.
I was looking at my watch and still worrying over Rhonda’s whereabouts when Delcia Reyes-Gonzales came striding across the gravel parking lot. I hadn’t seen her pull in and park. She waved at the occupants of a Buick Regal that was just parking in a handicapped area near the main door of the church.
Delcia hurried over to the driver’s side, opened the back door, and brought out a pair of crutches, which she handed to the driver as he opened his own door.
Puzzled, I watched, wondering who it could be. Delcia was talking animatedly, so it was obviously someone she knew. Then she went around to the rider’s side of the car and opened the rider’s door to help someone out. I could see it was a female, but that was about all. Meanwhile, the driver got out of the car, head bent as he slowly maneuvered on the crutches.
Only when the three of them started moving toward the church did I finally realize who the new arrivals were—Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens and his daughter Michelle.
“I’ll be damned,” I said aloud to Ralph Ames. “I will be damned!”
CHAPTER
23
The three of them moved toward the church slowly, keeping pace with Guy’s still-awkward use of the crutches. The cast on his leg went from his hip to his toe.
Suddenly, Michelle, walking with her head ducked, looked up and saw me. There was a momentary hesitation, then her face came alive with recognition and something else, a kind of light I had never seen in Michelle Owens before. She abandoned Delcia and her father and came rushing toward me, throwing herself at me from three feet away, locking her arms around my neck.
“Thank you,” she said over and over, her lips muffled against my chest. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I’ve saved people’s lives before, on occasion, but I don’t quite know how to handle that kind of effusive gratitude.
“You’re welcome,” I said, prying her arms away and holding her at arm’s length so I could look at her. When I did, I was shocked. Michelle had come to Joey Rothman’s funeral, her lover’s funeral. Tears brimmed in her eyes. Her skin was still pale from her ordeal, yet there was a glow of happiness in her eyes that was unmistakable. I saw more joy in her face, more animation, than I had seen during the entire month we had spent together at Ironwood Ranch. What the hell was going on?
Suddenly, her face darkened as though a shadow had fallen across it. “I’m sorry about Ringo,” she said.
“Ringo?”
“I was keeping him in my room until Friday. That’s when Joey was supposed to leave, and I didn’t have a roommate right then. I fed Ringo that morning. I mean, I gave him the mouse. I didn’t like it, but Joey asked me to.
“But then later, when I found out what had happened to Joey and my dad told me we were leaving, I didn’t know what to do. I knew Dad would never let me take him home, and I couldn’t just turn him loose, so before we left, I took him to your room and left him along with the extra mice. I didn’t know what else to do. If Ringo got out, I must not have tied the knot in the pillowcase tightly enough.”
Michelle stopped talking abruptly while the brimming tears in her eyes threatened to become a full-fledged deluge.
“It’s all right,” I said easily. “It wasn’t a problem. He didn’t hurt me.”
Much, I thought to myself, but I felt a sudden rush of relief as part of the burden I had been carrying around was lifted from my shoulders. Ringo’s presence in my darkened cabin had been an accident, not some kind of deliberate plot. Joey Rothman hadn’t tried to kill me after all.
Delcia Reyes-Gonzales and Guy Owens stopped behind Michelle.
“Is she here?” Delcia asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
Owens let go of the crossbar of one crutch and held out his hand. “Good to see you,” he said gruffly.
“Yes,” I said awkwardly, “same here.”
“Where’s Rhonda?” he asked, looking around.
So Delcia hadn’t told them that Rhonda Attwood was among the missing. She was leaving me to do the dirty work.
“She’s not here yet, but we’re expecting her any minute.”
Owens glanced down at Michelle and the absolute tenderness of it, the stupid hang-dog devotion in his gaze, put a huge lump in my throat.
“Do you have any idea where she’s going to sit inside?” Guy Owens asked. “Misha thought we ought to sit with her. Under the circumstances, that’s probably the right thing to do. With these damn crutches, though, I’d like to go on in and get settled.”
I’m a slow learner, but I do catch on—eventually. Guy Owens had changed his mind. Michelle was there glowing with happiness because she hadn’t had a D & C. She was going to have Joey Rothman’s baby after all, and she was going to keep it.
From the sound of things, she wouldn’t be doing it alone, either. Michelle would have not one but two doting grandparents to help her.
For a moment I was almost overwhelmed by the immensity of the job my own mother had done, raising me alone. When I was born, my mother had been only a few months older than Michelle Owens was now. No one had lifted a finger to help her.
I found my voice eventually and gave Michelle a gentle shove on the shoulder and pushed her toward her father.
“You two go on inside. Sit somewhere close to the front. I’ll wait out here for Rhonda and tell her to look for you when she gets here.”
Guy Owens nodded and started away, taking Michelle with him. “I’ll go too,” Delcia said.
The three of them disappeared into the church. The door had no more than closed behind them when a shiny gray stretch limo pulled up and stopped. The driver hurried around to open the door and the Rothmans clambered out—JoJo, Marsha, and Jennifer. Jennifer waved a downcast, halfhearted wave to me as she went past. JoJo Rothman nodded stiffly, but Marsha walked past with her eyes lowered and her shoulders hunched.
The change in her was alarming. Grief had aged her. In the few days since I had seen her last, she seemed to have closed the more-than-ten-year gap between Rhonda Attwood and herself.
Strange, I thought, seeing how badly she was taking it. Ironic for a stepmother to be so much more affected than Joey’s biological mother. And yet, as she walke
d by I wondered if, for all its apparent ravages, Marsha’s grief wasn’t like the post-funeral food being prepared in the kitchen—appropriate but just for show, because it was expected.
Without pausing to chat with anyone, the three Rothmans disappeared into the church.
By two-thirty, other guests began to filter into the parking lot and mill around the doorway. I noticed a news camera or two, but it wasn’t as blatant as I’ve seen at times. At least I didn’t see anybody shoving a microphone in one of the mourners’ faces.
But there was still no sign of Rhonda. Not by two forty-five, not by two-fifty. Even Ralph Ames was beginning to show impatience as he paced back and forth. “Something’s wrong,” he said ominously. “Something’s terribly wrong.”
I felt it too, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
At five to three the black-robed minister once more appeared in the doorway. “Aren’t you a friend of the mother’s?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“I don’t now.”
“If she isn’t here in five minutes, I’m starting without her.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Go ahead.”
He glared at me for a moment and went back inside, closing the door on the melancholy organ music that had followed him outside.
“What are we going to do?” Ralph asked.
I shrugged. “Wait inside, I guess.”
At three o’clock we went to stand inside the vestibule where, although the ushers had closed the doors into the sanctuary, we could still hear the electronically amplified voice of the minister.
I can remember my mother telling me once that she did some of her best thinking in church. As the service droned on, the haze before my eyes started to clear.
In my mind’s eye I saw Rhonda Attwood and Marsha Rothman, so alike and yet so dissimilar, standing side by side. Marsha wore her grief outwardly for all to see. Rhonda pretended hers didn’t exist, but it did. I knew it was there, but it had become such an integral part of her life that she carried it like a forgotten piece of jewelry, a wedding ring, for instance, that becomes a permanent part of the hand that wears it.
Flashes of Rhonda Attwood spun through my head like so many still photographs. Rhonda driving the Fiat up the mountainside. Rhonda in bed. Rhonda sitting in the chair sketching my portrait. Rhonda holding a gun. Rhonda kneeling over the briefcase twirling the lock. Rhonda telling me about JoJo’s attachment to his discarded briefcases…
There’s no rational way to explain insight, but the two things came together in my head with the impact of colliding continents—the secondhand image of a shelf of much-used briefcases lining JoJo Rothman’s garage and Jennifer Rothman telling me innocently enough that the best place to hide something was in plain sight.
I jumped like someone waking from a nap and headed for the door.
“What’s the matter?” Ames whispered harshly, following me toward the door. “Where are you going?”
“Take everyone back to the house right after the funeral,” I returned. “Delcia, Michelle, Guy Owens. Everybody, understand?”
Ralph nodded, but he looked puzzled. “Why?”
“Don’t ask questions. No time,” I said over my shoulder as I fought open the heavy door. On my way to the car, I fumbled in my pocket for the much-used Alamo map which I had stuck there more out of habit than necessity. I glanced down at the map as I went, getting a fix on Carefree and what looked like the quickest way there.
The Fiat didn’t much like being hot-wired, but it started and ran again. I sped north along Scottsdale Road, not daring to go too fast because I couldn’t stand any official scrutiny. At what looked like one of the last outposts of 7-Eleven civilization, I whipped into the parking lot and stopped beside a phone booth long enough to locate the Rothmans’ address. Then I went on.
Alamo’s map didn’t include any kind of detail of Carefree, and the first road I saw leading off to a residential area had a guard shack. It was time to try bluffing.
I swung in to the shack and whipped out my Seattle P.D. badge. “The Rothmans’,” I barked at the youthful security guard in my most officially intimidating fashion. “How do I get there?”
Police badges work wonders. I don’t think he even looked closely enough to see that it was from out of state. He pointed up the hill behind him. “Up there. Take the first right and then the second left. Third house on the right. You can’t miss it, but they’re all at the funeral right now, sit.”
“I know. I’ll wait.”
I drove away from the guard shack, feeling the clammy sweat under my armpits, still not knowing whether I was right or wrong. Until I turned right as directed. Until I saw Ralph Ames’ Lincoln Town Car pulled off to the side of the road and parked beside someone else’s mailbox. I parked there too. I glanced in the window of the Lincoln as I walked by. Rhonda’s purse was there, lying on the front seat. So was a large brown envelope.
As I approached the Rothmans’ sprawling house, I was surprised to see that one of the doors to the three-car garage had been left open. If what I suspected was true, JoJo and Marsha were putting far too much faith in their puny security guard, since both Rhonda and I had managed to breach that perimeter without any difficulty.
But then another thought crossed my mind. Maybe JoJo and Marsha hadn’t left the garage open. Maybe somebody else had. As a warning.
I walked directly up the driveway, my feet crunching noisily in the gravel, afraid that any skulking around on my part would alert one of the other residents. I knew that as soon as I stepped out of the bright sunlight into the shadowy garage I would be temporarily blinded, but I had to do it. It was the only way.
“Rhonda?” I said. “Rhonda, don’t shoot. It’s me. Beau.”
Behind me, the garage door silently began to go shut. I turned toward where I supposed the control panel would be, and there stood Rhonda Attwood. Just as the door went shut, darkening the garage completely, I caught sight of the .38 in her hand.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. The icy control in her voice chilled me despite the warmth of the interior of the garage.
“I came looking for you. You’re making a mistake.”
“There’s no mistake,” she said firmly. “I found what I was looking for.”
“What? Money?”
“See for yourself.”
The overhead light came on and again I saw what I expected. There were ten briefcases in all, lined up and sitting open on the floor between a silver Jag and a white BMW. Each case was full of tightly banded bills. No wonder JoJo Rothman had been such a successful developer. He must have always had a ready supply of cash when some kind of bargain showed up in the real estate market. He was a dealer and a money launderer at the same time. That cut out several expensive middlemen.
“You’re making a terrible mistake, Rhonda. Listen to me.”
She shook her head stubbornly and kept the gun trained on me. It didn’t help to know that I myself had loaded the .38 with its lethal cargo of bullets. I could see one other thing as well. She was wearing gloves, sheer latex gloves, so whatever prints they found on the gun would be mine—and Zeke’s, too, the poor guy.
“You’ve read the diary?” I asked.
“Enough of it to know what went on,” she returned coldly.
“And you think killing them will make it better?”
“It will make me feel better,” she whispered fiercely. “I know now how she did it, how she got Joey under her thumb and kept him there.”
“How?” I asked, lifting one foot and putting it down a few inches closer to her. “How did she do it?”
A ragged sob escaped her lips, but the gun didn’t waver. “It’s all there, in the book.”
“Rhonda,” I said. “Tell me. How did she do it?”
“She seduced him, that’s how!” Rhonda spat out the words with such ferocity that a small drop of spittle landed on my face. I didn’t brush it away. I couldn’t risk
any sudden movement that might distract her. I couldn’t risk doing anything that might break her concentration. Instead, I slowly shifted my other foot a few inches closer.
“When?” I asked.
“He was just a baby,” she sobbed. “It was molestation at first, just touching. That started when he was nine and she was seventeen. The other came later. Why didn’t he tell me? I would have had her arrested, I would have done something…”
“And then she threatened him if he told.”
Rhonda’s startled blue eyes met mine. “How did you know?”
“Because that’s the way it works. That’s what abusers do. They terrify kids into keeping quiet, into not telling their ugly secrets.”
“She turned him into her slave. Wrecked his life. Made him do her dirty work.”
“Joey’s probably not the only one,” I said, inching another half step closer. Rhonda was only about four feet away now. If she pulled the trigger, I was a dead man.
“Not the only one?” she asked, her voice faltering.
“What about that kid she sent after us the other night? Probably him, too. Believe me, Joey wasn’t the only one. It never works that way.”
“She’s a monster. I swear, I’m going to kill her. And JoJo, too.”
“No,” I said.
Suddenly she noticed where I was. “Stop,” she commanded. “Don’t come any closer. I’ll shoot.”
“Let the law take care of them, Rhonda.”
She laughed, almost hysterically, and I was afraid I was losing her. “They think they’re above the law and they probably are.”
“No,” I insisted. “Not this time. How did you get in here, Rhonda?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Did you leave any fingerprints on the briefcases when you opened them?”
“I wore gloves,” she answered coldly.
“Good,” I said. “Then close them and put them back, just the way you found them.”