Deadly Deceptions

by Linda Lael Miller

  I turned to the albums. There weren’t a lot of pictures, and most of them were old. In one, a couple in sixties garb stood beaming in front of what looked like the same double-wide we were sitting in.

  “My mom and dad,” Helen explained, her face softening. “This was their place. It was new back then.”

  I swallowed, thinking of my own dead parents. “They’re both gone?”

  “Both gone,” Helen confirmed.

  I flipped more pages. Helen, growing up. Helen, on horseback, then dressed for a dance, then graduating from high school. Helen, standing with a smarmy-looking guy in a wife-beater shirt and cutoff jeans, holding a baby in her arms.

  Benny Pellway looked like the kind of guy who ought to be doing twenty to life in the state pen. I decided to make sure he hadn’t escaped. Shortcut: ask Tucker. The police would have checked that first thing.

  After that, the snapshots were mostly of Gillian, usually sitting alone on a blanket, clutching a ragged stuffed dog.

  “She always wanted a pet,” Helen said with painful regret. She’d been leaning in her recliner so she could see the pictures, too.

  Gillian signed a word, and I was pretty sure it was dog.

  My throat squeezed shut again. “She’s here,” I said. I hadn’t planned on saying that—it just came out of my mouth.

  “What?” Helen asked, blinking.

  I figured she was about to throw me out, but it was too late to backtrack. “I can see Gillian,” I said. “She’s sitting in the little rocking chair by the fireplace.”

  Helen turned in that direction. Signed something.

  Gillian duplicated the sign eagerly.

  I love you.

  I hadn’t gotten very far in my studies, but I knew that one.

  My heart sort of caved in on itself.

  Helen got up, walked toward the chair.

  Gillian instantly vanished.

  What did that mean? I wondered.

  I knew Gillian wasn’t afraid of Helen Erland. She obviously liked to be with her, wanted very much to get her attention somehow. Maybe just to say goodbye.

  “Is she still here?” Helen wondered softly.

  “No,” I said.

  Helen, standing in the middle of the living room now, turned to study me narrowly. “Are you some kind of psychic or something?”

  “No.”

  “But you saw my Gillian?”

  I nodded. Looked up at the electric Jesus picture and had a sudden, strange urge to plug it in. “Yes.”

  “Can you talk to her?”

  “She doesn’t speak, but she reads my lips sometimes. And she wrote ‘Mom’ in the dust on the dashboard of my car yesterday. That’s why I came into the store. Because she wanted to see you.”

  Helen’s legs buckled, and she dropped heavily to the floor, landing on her knees.

  I knew she hadn’t fainted, so I stayed where I was. Waited.

  It was an intensely private moment, to say the least, and I felt bad for being there to see it.

  Tears poured down her face. “My baby,” she whispered. “Oh, my baby.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Helen looked up at the light-up picture. “Why?” she demanded. “Why is she just wandering around, lost? Why isn’t she in heaven?”

  I wasn’t sure if she was asking me or Jesus. Both of us, probably.

  I looked at the picture, too. The ball’s in Your court, Big Guy, I thought.

  “I don’t know for sure,” I answered when I could get the words past the lump in my throat, “but I think it has to do with finding her killer.” Justin’s mother, Mrs. Braydaven, crossed my mind. Helen Erland had just seen her only child buried. She wasn’t ready to hear that she’d need to let go of Gillian at some point.

  Helen turned again, studied me, still on her knees in the middle of the living room. She opened her mouth, but before she could say whatever she’d intended to, the front door opened and a slim teenage girl walked in without bothering to knock.

  Seeing Helen kneeling, her face wet with tears, the girl turned on me. “What did you say to her?”

  I remembered catching a glimpse of her at Gillian’s funeral. She’d been with the camerawoman.

  “It’s all right, Chelsea,” Helen said, getting up. “This is Mojo Sheepshanks. She’s a private investigator. Mojo, this is Chelsea Grimes. She’s—she was Gillian’s babysitter.”

  Chelsea studied me suspiciously. She had short blond hair, blue eyes and wore a skimpy pink T-shirt—the kind that leaves most of the stomach showing—and low-cut jeans. A silver ring glinted from her belly button.

  On most people, the bare-belly look is unflattering. On Chelsea Grimes it definitely worked. She was probably only sixteen or seventeen, and she was clearly protective of Helen.

  “Helen’s been through a lot,” Chelsea said. “She doesn’t need somebody over here giving her a nervous breakdown.”

  I stood, still holding the photo albums.

  “Chelsea, it’s okay,” Helen said.

  Chelsea followed me outside to my car. The way she picked her way over the gravel finally clued me in that she was barefoot. Since there wasn’t another vehicle in sight, I guessed she must live nearby, but it was possible someone had dropped her off.

  “Look,” Chelsea said, “the cops have been all over Helen since they found Gillian. Her husband is in jail. Cut her a break and don’t go asking her all kinds of questions, okay?”

  I was too tired and too despondent to smile. “How long were you Gillian’s babysitter, Chelsea?”

  “Forever,” Chelsea said, cocking a thumb toward a cluster of spindly eucalyptus trees. I could see the outline of a small house beyond. “I live just over there, with my mom.”

  I nodded. Opened the passenger door of the Volvo and set the photo albums carefully on the seat. “Do you think Vince Erland killed Gillian?”

  Chelsea flushed. “The police already asked me that,” she said. “About a million times. And the answer is how should I know? I told them that. I told Tucker. Vince never put the moves on me, but he’s a sleazeball, so anything’s possible.”

  I told Tucker.

  “You know Tucker Darroch?”

  “Yes. I know Tuck—Mr. Darroch. I babysit Daisy and Danny sometimes.”

  Cave Creek is a small town. It wasn’t a surprise that Chelsea knew the Darrochs and looked after their children. It did bother me a little that she’d referred to Tucker by his first name.

  But then, she’d called Helen Erland “Helen.”

  Manners have changed since I was a kid.

  “Why is Vince a sleazeball?” I asked.

  Chelsea shrugged. “He can’t hold a job, but he sure doesn’t mind spending whatever Helen brings in on beer and cigarettes. My dad was like that, but he had the good manners to shoot himself in the head three years ago—problem solved. Except that my mom’s still in the market for another loser.”

  “You’re pretty bitter,” I said, “for somebody so young.”

  “You would be, too, if you were me,” Chelsea said. “I can’t wait to get out of this hole. One thing’s for sure—I’m never going to hook up with some bum who can’t even support his own family.”

  “I guess Vince promised Gillian a dog, and then went back on his word,” I said, testing the ice.

  “I could have told her not to believe a word he said, if I knew how to speak sign language.” She huffed out a disgusted sigh. “Even Tucker, hot as he is, moved out on the wife and kids and took up with some slut who lives over a biker bar.”

  “Is that so?” I asked moderately.

  “You can’t trust them,” Chelsea went on. I was surprised by all the chatter, given that she’d been so protective of Helen Erland a few minutes earlier. I let the whole slut issue slide. “Men, I mean. Not even the ‘good’ ones.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Evidently finished, she turned and stomped back inside.

  I got behind the wheel and backed out of the Erlands’ driveway
, onto the road.

  I’d call Helen Erland later, I decided, and see if she’d spoken to Vince’s lawyer about that visit.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TUCKER’S SUV WAS SITTING in the driveway when I got back to Greer’s, and I felt a leap of anticipation, square in the center of my heart, before it occurred to me that he might be there on official business. As in, arresting Greer. If Alex’s body had been found in the desert, outside the city limits of both Scottsdale and Phoenix, then the jurisdiction belonged to Maricopa County, and the sheriff’s department would lead the investigation.

  Full of dread, I approached Greer’s front door instead of heading for the guesthouse out back. The doorbell bonged through a ponderous sequence, and it was Jolie who opened up.

  “He’s here,” she whispered. “Tucker.”

  I nodded, cocked a thumb to indicate that I’d seen his rig.

  “Be careful what you say,” Jolie told me.

  I rolled my eyes. People tell me that all the time. You’d think they’d figure out that I never listen.

  Greer was enthroned in her massive living room, with its beamed ceilings and imported tile floor. Authentic Navaho rugs hung between museum-quality paintings on the white walls, and there was one in front of the fireplace, too.

  Tucker sat in a high-backed leather chair, in jeans and the blue cotton shirt he’d been wearing on TV that morning, his left ankle propped on his right knee. He’d been studying a sheaf of papers, but when I entered the room he looked up. Smiled with his eyes, if not his mouth. Started to get up.

  I shook my head, motioned for him to stay seated. Tore my gaze from him and shifted my attention to Greer. She looked so bereft, so insubstantial sitting there, a wad of tissue crumpled in her right hand, that the image of Gillian in her little rocking chair back at Helen Erland’s double-wide did a fade-in on my mental screen. For one terrible moment I thought Greer was dead, and I was seeing her ghost.

  She must have heard the doorbell, but when she looked up, she seemed surprised that she wasn’t alone in the room. The expression in her eyes reminded me of some wild thing, hunted down and trapped. Cornered, with no hope of escape.

  I went to her, sat on the arm of her chair and slipped an arm around her. “What’s going on?” I asked mildly after giving both Jolie and Tucker a glance that said I’d protect my sister—even from them.

  “Tucker’s here to ask some routine questions,” Jolie said before Tucker managed to reply.

  He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Set the papers aside. Reports, probably. Or were they copies of Alex’s insurance policies—or perhaps his will?

  A shudder strolled down my spine, then shivered right back up again to tingle on my nape. I waited.

  Tucker stood. Shifted slightly on the soles of his beat-up cowboy boots. I remember wondering, completely out of context, if he’d sat on the edge of Allison’s bed that morning to pull on those boots. If Allison had been the one to tell Chelsea he’d left his family for a “slut who lives over a biker bar.”

  “I’m sorry for bothering you at a time like this, Mrs. Pennington,” he said, though he was looking at me as he spoke, not Greer. He took a card from his shirt pocket, laid it on the end table on top of the papers he’d been reading. “If you think of anything you figure I should know—anything at all—call me.”

  Greer nodded numbly. Even without seeing her face, I knew she’d disconnected. Tucker was no more real to her than the dead greeter at Wal-Mart would have been.

  Tucker’s eyes connected with mine, held.

  “You see Detective Darroch out,” Jolie told me, briskly efficient. “I’m going to help Greer upstairs. She needs to rest.”

  I nodded, watched as Jolie got Greer on her feet and steered her toward the curving stairway.

  Tucker could have found his own way out, of course, but he waited for me.

  “We need to talk,” he said, repeating what had become his stock phrase, when we were outside, with the door closed behind us. “Your place? Or we can get some dinner somewhere.”

  I knew Gillian or Justin, or both of them, might be in the guesthouse, waiting for me to come back. I could have dealt with that, but adding Tucker to the mix was just a shade more than I could handle.

  “Dinner,” I said. “If you’re buying.”

  He grinned wanly, looking sort of like the old Tucker, but not quite. I wondered if it was the new job that had changed him, or sharing a house with Allison and the kids. I longed for the good old days, before I’d started seeing dead people, before—well, just before. “I’m buying,” he assured me. “Things a little slow in the detective business, Sheepshanks?”

  “I have to give back Greer’s retainer,” I admitted. He knew my sister had advanced me five thousand dollars to find out if Alex was being unfaithful, with another five grand to follow if I got the goods on him—I’d bragged about it. After all, it was my first case. Since I didn’t want to tap in to Nick’s insurance money, I’d probably have to hit the casino and work the slot machines for some ready cash. I have a talent for making them pay, but I’ll get to that later.

  We’d reached Tucker’s SUV, and he opened the passenger door for me, waited while I climbed in and snapped the seat belt in place.

  “I guess Pennington’s getting killed sort of threw a wrench in the works,” Tucker said. “But at least now you know he’s not cheating on your sister.”

  I didn’t answer until he’d rounded the SUV and gotten behind the wheel. Started the engine. “Isn’t it a little soon for you to be questioning her?” I asked tightly. “After all, they only found the body this morning.”

  “Write this down and hide it in the secret compartment of your magic detector ring, Moje,” Tucker answered, backing out onto the street. “It’s important to question everybody who might have been involved in a homicide, or have any knowledge that might be helpful for the case, before they’ve had a chance to think about it too much.”

  I folded my arms. “You did notice, didn’t you, that Greer has a cast on her arm? How do you figure she could have muscled Alex out into the desert and then shot him?”

  “She didn’t have to do all that,” Tucker pointed out, watching the road. “She could have hired somebody.”

  “So could the other Mrs. Pennington,” I said. I felt a pang. I’d have to call Beverly in a few days and offer my condolences. We weren’t friends, or even acquaintances, really, but she’d wanted to hire me. While my reasons for not showing up for lobster salad were obvious, and thus required no explanations or apologies, I wanted to acknowledge her in some way.

  “Scottsdale PD is on that one,” Tucker replied, “and Phoenix is checking the Biltmore angle.”

  “It’s a joint investigation, then?”

  “More like a cooperative effort,” he said. “Can we not talk about this?”

  “What do you want to talk about?” I asked, and maybe I sounded a little terse. “My sister’s estranged husband was found in the desert, strafed with bullets. A seven-year-old dead girl is following me around, and I don’t really know what she wants. Excuse me if things like that tend to distract me from the really important issues, like how you want to live with your ex-wife and boink me in your spare time.”

  Tucker whipped the SUV to the side of the road so suddenly that the tires screeched, and dust billowed all around us. I was glad the windows were rolled up, because I didn’t want to have to wash my hair again.

  “I am not living with Allison!” he snapped. Then he thrust out a sigh and shoved a hand through his hair. “Not the way you mean, anyway.”

  “Okay,” I said calmly. After all, one of us had to keep it together. “Let’s assume you’re telling the truth. You’re sleeping on the couch, or in one of the guest rooms. Except for holding Allison when she cries, because she’s so upset over what happened to Gillian—and who wouldn’t be?—you haven’t touched her. I can buy all that, Tucker. I really can. And I wouldn’t ask you to do any of this differently. But while you’ve got
one foot in your marriage to Allison, you’re not putting your boots under my bed.”

  “Who’s going to hold you when you cry, Moje?”

  The question broadsided me, with an impact that literally knocked the breath from my lungs.

  Tucker leaned across the console, caught my face in both his hands and turned my head so I had to look at him. “Who, Moje?”

  Another shiver went through me, stronger than the one I’d felt a few minutes before, in Greer’s living room. Strong enough to rattle my bones. “Nobody,” I said bleakly.

  Someone swerved out around us, honked impatiently.

  We ignored them.

  And Tucker kissed me, gently at first, then with tongue.

  I know I should have pushed him away, but I didn’t. Because I’d cried a lot in my life, and just once, I wanted someone—Tucker—to hold me. To say everything would be all right, even if it was a lie. I just wanted to believe it for a little while, until I could get my equilibrium back.

  As Tucker deepened the kiss, fiery sensations shot through me, hardening my nipples, making me squirm on the car seat. We both had all our clothes on, but I was already expanding to take him in. I was moist and achy, and my nerve endings jumped and crackled under my skin. My skeleton began to melt from the heat.

  It was Tucker who drew back, still holding my face between his hands, and said, “My place is five minutes from here. Do you still want dinner?”

  I hesitated.

  He lowered one hand to cup my breast, rubbing the side of his thumb slowly back and forth across my nipple. “Moje?” he rasped.

  I whimpered, arched my back.

  Tucker dropped his hand from my breast to my thigh. Bunched the soft, skimpy fabric of my sundress and pushed it up. Caressed me through my panties before slipping his fingers inside to play with me.

  “This—is—entrapment,” I protested, dizzy.

  “I want to put my mouth where my fingers are now, Moje,” he told me. “And suck on you until you come. And then come again. And again—” He began a slow, swirling motion with his hand. My knees fell apart, and I thought about his lips and tongue on me, and I stiffened with a small, sharp orgasm, over too soon. Instead of satisfying me, it left me desperate for more.