I would think more later, but for now I told him to go ahead with the alarm system, which he installed within an hour. He showed me how to program it with a passcode, and explained how the sheriff’s department would be alerted if it went off. I knew all this but I let him talk. I’d been dealing with security my whole life. The only difference is that I had let my guard down living here with Carlo, in Jane’s house.
That made me remember the doorbell played Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Call it petty, small-minded, insecure, what have you, but this was one reminder of Jane I could eliminate. I mentioned it to the security guy.
“I don’t think I can reprogram it easily. Would you like me to disengage it altogether?”
Nice man. I said yes. Visitors could knock. Carlo wouldn’t mind. Neither of us was very social, and so few people came to the house he probably wouldn’t even notice. That made me think, who, besides the occasional salesperson or evangelist, had rung the bell in the past six months? And who had made nice with the pugs?
I started to link together all the little points of the past couple of weeks like a dot-to-dot picture. Showing up at the back fence. Living within walking distance. Being so helpful with moving the telescope. Happening to see Carlo at Bashas’. Getting an invitation to dinner. Not mentioning the woman he lived with, let alone asking if she could join him. Lying about where he was born or lying about where his family went to church. Lying about being a jockey. Ingratiating himself with the pugs.
I got down on the floor, which was the signal for Al and Peg to rush me. I sniffed them as if I could detect cheese on their breath, silly, I know. They both tried to French my nose.
“What do you know, pups?” I asked them. “Come on, talk to me.”
They remained inscrutable. As I belly-rubbed them simultaneously, one on each side, I wondered what Jeremiah Beaufort wanted from me. Was it revenge? Or was it something I had in my files that could incriminate him for something far greater than the risk of getting caught for burglary? Was that his goal, to search the house? And in order to do so without anyone around, would he have set up the whole charade of making it look like gang members were breaking into neighborhood homes for the sole purpose of finding something in ours? If so, what was that thing he was looking for?
Thirty–two
Max agreed to meet me at Carlota’s, which up in Catalina was about as far as you could get from Tucson proper without leaving the county. But we didn’t meet on Taco Tuesday when the place was packed. And not even at lunchtime. Three in the afternoon found the restaurant empty, and even so we sat at a table in the back corner behind a pillar with some vines painted on it. He showed no surprise when I said, “I know who committed the burglaries.”
“Who?”
“This man.” I put the most recent mug shot on the table. “He’s close to seventy now, but this was him about thirty years ago. He goes by the name of Jerry Nolan, but his real name is Jeremiah Beaufort.”
Max shook his head. “I can’t believe what you’re telling me. A seventy-year-old man broke into three houses and painted gang signs?”
“I know, improbable. But he’s been stalking us. And maybe worse.”
“Stalking. Give me more.”
“He showed up first at the back of our property. Made nice with Carlo. Helped him move his telescope.”
“He sounds like a real threat to the public weal. Brigid. It’s Arizona, and people are friendlier than in the East. Strangers wave. You’ve been here several years now. Get used to it. Have you got anything I can use?”
Max put up a finger to keep me from answering while a waitress came up behind me and put a dish of salsa and a basket of tortilla chips on the table between us. “That’s not the hot, did you want hot?” she asked, referring to the salsa. Then she took a pad out of her apron pocket to take our order. Max was about to shake his head impatiently, but Carlota’s was my Mexican restaurant (everyone in Tucson has this kind of loyalty) and I didn’t want any hard feelings no matter what was going on. “I’ll have the topopo salad with pulled pork, please,” I said, handing her the menu I didn’t need to look at because I had it memorized.
She seemed satisfied that the order was large enough even though Max was only having an iced tea.
“When I was checking to see who might have gotten out and I hadn’t been notified, I found out about this guy. Jeremiah Beaufort, a petty drug dealer who got let out with that recent release of nonviolent criminals.”
“So. He was in prison. And he’s not even paroled, his sentence was commuted. You’re still not making a connection.”
“With all his visiting, why didn’t it ever come up in conversation?”
“You’re being overly sensitive. He’s not a sex offender, Brigid. It’s not like he has to register. He was under no obligation to tell you he’s an ex-con. How did you even find out about him?”
I took a deep breath. “I found out where he was living, in one of those prefab jobs on Hawser. I lifted his print off the door handle and had it run.”
“Good God, woman. And you say he’s being creepy?”
“You don’t trust me,” I said.
He gave me one of those no shit looks. Ignoring it, I told Max about everything, the vibe I got from the woman Jerry lived with, the fact that the pugs hadn’t objected to the burglar, and … the pièce de résistance … how he might have disabled my brakes. As I said all these things, they seemed rather less compelling than when I had thought them earlier that day. I could see by his face that he was thinking the same thing.
Max dipped a chip into the salsa now that he figured he was dealing with a nonissue and was allowing himself to relax a little. His tone was condescending as he asked, “If you think he’s after you, what’s his motivation?”
I ignored the condescension. “I don’t know. I don’t know that yet.” The topopo salad arrived and I forked some out of the fried tortilla shell that served as a bowl. “So you won’t help me?”
Max looked mildly disgusted by my question, treating me like an ignorant civilian, an old woman with possibly some paranoia. He said, “Help how? I get involved when a crime is committed. So far what I’m hearing is suspicion—“
“Instinct—”
“—without any substantiation, simply based on the single fact, no, two provable facts, that the guy didn’t tell you he was in prison, and that he gave you a different name. Brigid, we got bigger problems than that. And here’s another thing. You said you were going to keep a low profile. The only one I can see breaking the law here is you. Prowling around some man’s property is not a low-profile thing to do. Stop it.”
“We used to get along so well, didn’t we? Playing poker. Talking philosophy.”
“That was Carlo.”
Having lost any appetite I might have had at three in the afternoon, I took out a twenty and laid it on the table. “I’ll tell you something, Max, this is what happened the last time. You didn’t trust me before, and it nearly got us all killed. You’re a bullheaded bastard, you know that?”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re a loose cannon? I worry more about what you’ll do than what anyone else will do.”
I got up and grabbed my tote bag from the corner of the chair. “Okay, have it your way, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’ll take care of this on my own.”
Max rose, too, like he totally got the threat. “Don’t you do anything, Brigid. I’d just as soon arrest you for trespassing as try to pin something on that poor old man.”
“Poor old man. Bite me, Coyote. Times like this I wish I had a dick for the sole purpose of telling you to suck it,” I said. “Plus, you really going to arrest me, and where might that go? You want to be held accountable for a cover-up?”
Max knew what I meant, the case that broke our friendship and caused this animosity. The waitress ran up when she saw that I had stood, and it wasn’t to make sure I wasn’t stiffing her. They knew me better than that. She tried to hand me a takeout container. “You want to take that with
you?” she asked, pointing to my hardly touched salad. I summoned a smile and said no thanks.
Well, that didn’t go very well. I had an alternative that I didn’t want to use, going around Max, I mean. But it looked like I had no choice. Well, sure I did, I always have a choice, but what the hell.
* * *
We’ve got a neighborhood online chat group. You can sell your dining room table, offer to walk dogs, and ask about a good landscaper. You can also post alarming messages about having your house broken into, warning others. I was counting on this when I pulled up the chat group and found the other two victims. One of them was old enough to still have a landline that was available through directory assistance. I called and got Artie on the phone.
I got right down to it, said I was another one of the houses broken into, and asked, “You hear of any progress in the investigation?”
“Not a thing. My wife is so jarred by the break-in she’s afraid to leave the house. That business with the graffiti on the wall threw her for a loop. She thinks it’s satanic.”
“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. It looked more like a gang sign.”
“I don’t think that will comfort my wife. What do you know about gang signs?”
“Watching crime shows on TV. What did they get?”
“Mostly jewelry, but it didn’t look like they knew what they were looking for. Got mostly junk, and left her mother’s engagement ring. They left the laptops. That’s why we were told it was probably some kids. I hate kids.” He paused, waiting for my agreement.
“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to go off on a tangential rant.
Satisfied with that, Artie said, “My wife wants me to call a home security company. I don’t know where to start.”
I gave him the name of the company I had used. And thinking he would trust me enough at this point, I asked, “Tell me, do you have a dog?”
“No. I hate dogs.”
“What about filing cabinets?”
I half expected him to say he hated filing cabinets, but he said, “No. We keep our important papers in two of those containers with a lid and a handle. That’s all we need.”
“Where do you keep them?”
“Under a desk in one of the guest rooms. Why?”
“Were they disturbed at all?”
“Not that we could see. You know, I hadn’t thought until now how weird that is. All our Social Security information, passwords, all kinds of important things are in those files.”
“Oh, maybe not so weird. Burglars more often go for tangible items they can fence.”
So I didn’t get any information about possible suspects from the other victim, but I got a different way of looking at my own. With the other home they went for small valuables. My place they went for files—after making it look like they were stealing other items. Max missed this angle. What were they looking for, and why did they go through the elaborate ruse of making it look like multiple gang break-ins?
Thirty–three
While Gloria was at work, Beaufort took Achilles to the local dog park and threw the tennis ball he’d bought for the dog. He was still angry about having failed to dispatch the Quinn woman, but it eased his frustration to watch Achilles run on his three legs as fast as any dog on four. When life hands you lemons, Beaufort thought, thinking of another plaque on the wall in Gloria’s house. Dog wasn’t too smart, though. When he got to the ball Achilles looked at it and then at Beaufort as if saying Now what? As Beaufort walked to the ball, threw it, and walked to the ball again, he assessed his situation. He thought he was smart that way. He thought he could look at all the elements of a problem, link them together, and formulate a good plan. Here is where he stood:
With the appearance of that sketch of Hickock it seemed likely that if DiForenza had that much, he had the other thing that could incriminate him.
He had received that thing from Father Victor Santangelo, who was now dead.
Question: Did DiForenza know he had the document? This was not certain.
But if DiForenza knew he had it, and had read it, there was nothing in it to connect Beaufort to either the Clutter or Walker murders.
He must not have read it. He might not even know what he had.
DiForenza was not a problem.
The problem was his wife, Brigid Quinn, the FBI agent.
Brigid Quinn suspected him, but how could she?
Maybe she did without knowing what she suspected him of.
What he did know is that she was harder to kill than he had at first thought.
What should he do now?
A pragmatist, that’s what he was. Not a killer. He sat down on the ground with his back against a mesquite tree, not needing the scant shade that the tree could provide on a summer day. Achilles lay down beside him, panting from his ball chasing, his back pressed against Beaufort’s thigh.
“You know I’m not a bad man, don’t you, boy?” Beaufort said, stroking the bump where the dog’s leg had been. Achilles licked his hand. “If I was a bad man we wouldn’t get along so well. And you’re the only one I can talk to. I can’t talk to anybody else. Not even Yanchak.” Maybe it was screwy, but as he spoke to Achilles just then it felt very natural, talking to a dog.
But Beaufort knew he couldn’t tell even Achilles what he had done in Garden City.
As he had watched the progress of the case with Dick Hickock and Perry Smith back then, there had been headlines about the two changing their confession. Smith took the rap for killing all the Clutters. This was a sure sign to Beaufort that he was in the clear. Hickock must have agreed, maybe figuring that he’d at least escape the death penalty.
But when the verdict came in, and the penalty for both of them was execution, things weren’t so clear-cut anymore. Beaufort watched the weeks go by with the pair not talking, but the gnawing at his mind grew worse despite, maybe because of, their silence. He felt confident of Smith, but what of Hickock?
“I had to send a message to Hickock, that he needed to keep up his side of the bargain no matter what,” Beaufort said to Achilles. “I didn’t have a choice.” Achilles turned his head and gazed at Beaufort, who felt like he was being hugged with the look. Beaufort hadn’t felt this way before, not even with Gloria. He stroked the soft fur from Achilles’s neck to the spot where the dog’s tail sprouted. Achilles rolled over onto his back for a tummy rub, and Beaufort obliged.
Beaufort had done what he had to do, and when it was reported in the Garden City newspaper, he clipped out the article and put it in his shirt pocket. He thumbed a ride a safe distance from the home where Hickock had lived with his parents, and where Mrs. Hickock lived alone now that the father was dead. Beaufort walked the rest of the way, off the road close to the trees and tall shrubs that lined it, so as not to risk ever being discovered.
When he got to the house it was early evening and the lights were on, so he was able to easily see Mrs. Hickock sitting at the kitchen table. When he snuck in the door that led straight to the kitchen, he saw she was just sitting there, staring at her hands clasped on the tabletop. Intent, as if the hands held a secret that they weren’t giving up. So intent was she that it was easy for Beaufort to come up behind her.
She jumped when he brought his hands down firmly on her shoulders.
“Don’t turn around,” he said in his deepest voice, which you’d never think would go with his stature and his boyish face.
When he thought that she would obey, he said, “I want you to visit your son, Dick. I want you to tell him that he better keep his mouth shut.”
“I don’t under—” the woman began.
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll understand. And he’ll understand when you tell him that if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut people he loves will be hurt bad. You.” He slowly lifted his hands from her shoulders, but she seemed frozen in place. He drew the newspaper article out of his pocket and tossed it on the table in front of her eyes where she could read it without moving her head. “Show this to him. It’s my g
uarantee,” he said, and slipped out the back door while she read it.
It wasn’t nearly as sensational as all the news surrounding the Clutter family murders and subsequent capture and trial of Hickock and Smith. Just a small article, an incident that nobody thought critical to the public well-being. Just a kid’s prank, they must have thought.
Ten dogs had been poisoned around Garden City.
“You know I’d never hurt you, don’t you, boy?” Beaufort said, getting to his feet. That seemed good enough for Achilles. He rolled the ball into his mouth and stood up, ready to go home.
Thirty–four
Down at the corner of Oracle and Golder Ranch Road there’s a shop that caters to the wealthy enclave of Saddlebrooke, about five miles to the north, selling local art and doing a first-rate job of custom framing. That’s where we take our occasional business, so when Drew from Framing and More called with a question about “the job,” I thought I was only having a senior lapse.
“What job?” I asked. “Did I forget I gave you something to frame?”
“No, your husband did.”
I haven’t totally lost my brain. I knew immediately this was an anniversary gift, but I had more serious things on my mind at the moment. “Tell you what, he’s down at Starizona getting some telescope computer thing fixed. Could I ask you to call again in a couple of hours? I think this is supposed to be a surprise.”
“Oh, sorry. It’s not actually finished, I just had a question about what I should do with the letter I found between the sketch and the cardboard backing. Carlo didn’t say anything about the letter.”
Sketch? A letter behind the sketch that Carlo didn’t know about? What the hell? My attention swerved. “What sketch?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What’s the sketch of?”
“It’s a man’s face. Done in pencil.”
“You know my husband. Is it him?”
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