The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  As Laura lay in the shelter of Tom’s body, she understood that everything had changed. She, who prided herself on her independence, realized that she had committed herself to him. The commitment was clean and hard and pure, and she didn’t want to go back to the way it was before. You couldn’t unring a bell, and Laura found that she didn’t want to.

  Luxuriating in his closeness, she felt his breath on her shoulder, his sides rising and falling in sleep. And she smiled. Drowsed.

  The crunch of a twig startled her into full wakefulness. In an instant, every muscle, every nerve, every synapse was on alert.

  A laugh. Or was it the wind rustling through the trees way up?

  No, a laugh. Barely there, crude and insinuating.

  She huddled in the tent, stone-scared, Tom beside her still deep in sleep. Her heart pounding.

  A shoe scraped on dirt. Laura braced herself, knew what was coming next, but for some reason, couldn’t move. But Tom did. He erupted from the sleeping bag and took hold of her, dragging her across the tent with incredible force, covering her with his body just as the first volley blasted through the tent like a rocket booster.

  Shot peppering the inside of the tent, exploding in the ground beside her. Three loud blasts. She must be hit, but was still in shock, the organs of her body no doubt already breaking down—

  Tom’s grip loosening suddenly, Laura squirming in his arms, trying to see him, his blood raining down on her face. The realization that he was dead barreling through her, dousing her in sweat.

  An excruciating cramp in her calf.

  Automatically, she shortened the muscle in her leg. The pain vanished in an instant. The harmonica chord of a passing train sounded close by. She realized she was in a motel room in Williams, on old Route 66, alone. No Tom. No one shooting at them. The sheets plastered to her with sweat.

  The train horn again. The desert where she lived outside Tucson was two miles as the crow flew from the railroad tracks. The train tracks here were only a block away.

  She sat up in bed and got her bearings. A generic motel room, the yellow porch light from the walk outside creeping in around the curtains and staining the round table by the window. As the train horn receded, Laura noticed a ping-ping-ping sound coming from down the street. The pain in her calf gone completely, she got out of bed and looked out, isolating the sound: the chain on the flagpole outside Williams PD, pinging every time the flag unfurled in the wind.

  It was windy. She could hear it, scrabbling in the corners of the motel, gusting through the trees, the scraping branch on the bathroom window. A restless night.

  Flicking on the light, she went into the bathroom and stared at her face. She looked the same. Just another bad dream in a string of bad dreams.

  “Seems to me you’ve been having a lot those lately.”

  Laura stared past her own reflection through the bathroom doorway at Frank Entwistle, sitting in the chair by the door.

  She said, “It goes with the job.”

  “You know it.” The retired TPD homicide cop, recently dead, crossed one leg over his knee at the ankle. She could see a spot where his wife Pat had darned his socks. Who darned socks anymore?

  It occurred to her that she hadn’t visited Pat since Frank’s burial. This made her feel guilty.

  Entwistle lit a cigarette. Laura could swear she smelled it, dry and slightly cloying, like the wind chuckling at the doorjamb outside.

  “What do you think about this guy, Dan? Quite the hero, huh? First instinct was to save his wife. Kid had guts, shielding her like that.”

  “I know.”

  “I bet you’d do anything to get the guy who did this.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “You’d do anything to get him, and that’s good. But the way you’re going about it …” He shook his head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lorie, you think you can fool me? This isn’t about Dan Yates and Kellee Taylor. It’s about you.”

  She felt as if he’d pried up something, a piece of wood over a window, just the edge. Just warping it a little, enough to let in a pinhole of light. “How’s it about me?” she asked, aware that her voice sounded weak and high.

  Entwistle rubbed the bridge of his nose, the cigarette dangerously close to his eyebrows. He did not look good. His face was that unhealthy pink of a glistening ham, and his white hair was almost translucent. Appropriate for a ghost.

  “You’re not helping anybody, the way you’re going.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “What’s that Bible quote? Take the log out of your own eye before trying to take the mote out of someone else’s?”

  “What does that mean?” She grabbed a washcloth, saturated it with water, started going over her arms and legs to rid herself of the dried sweat. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Just a piece of advice, kiddo. Work the case because it’s your job.”

  “I’m planning on it.”

  He stood up. “This place is starting to fence me in. I’m gonna take a walk.” He opened the door and looked back at her, his eyes sad. “You know what they say, though. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

  Another damn cliché. If she had to be haunted by a ghost, why couldn’t she have one with a fresh thought in his head?

  Entwistle pointed his finger at her. “And you’re the one in the glass house.”

  He walked out into the restless dark, the wind tugging on the top-piece of the hair that looked like a toupee but wasn’t, and shut the door behind him.

  Laura went to the door and opened it.

  As she’d expected, the parking lot was empty.

  9

  The air had a chill to it when Laura turned out of the Pioneer Motel parking lot a little after five the next morning. The place was dead quiet on a Sunday morning, the street empty except for a crumpled-up fast-food wrapping scudding along the curb.

  She stopped at Circle K on the main drag for coffee, parking beside an old International Scout with the engine running and a hunting dog in the back. Two guys in camos holding a six-pack of beer and snacks nodded to her as they got in.

  Feeling out of balance and mildly depressed, she dog-legged over to First Street to avoid the one-way street, and took the road out of town.

  She and Richie had decided to split up for the day. He would drive to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and talk to Dan’s and Kellee’s friends and roommates. Laura would retrace the young couple’s movements to and from Las Vegas.

  On the seat beside her was a photocopy of a gas receipt from a Circle K in Kingman, photos of Dan and Kellee from the trip, and their marriage license.

  She doubted the answer would be found in Vegas, but she couldn’t ignore the one detail in the Route 93 road-rage incident—the passenger waving a rifle. Laura didn’t like the lag time between Dan and Kellee’s drive back and the time they were killed, but there could be an explanation. She’d seen stranger things in her career as a detective.

  On the way, Laura found herself thinking not about the case but about what Frank Entwistle had said about glass houses.

  She knew she was brittle, that in some ways she was barely hanging on. She acknowledged that this was why Tom’s lack of interest yesterday morning had wounded her so deeply. In a world where every little thing seemed to get to her, she’d counted on Tom as the only person in her life she could depend on. Maybe she depended on him too much.

  Laura knew about needy people. She didn’t like them herself, so why would she expect Tom to? Tom had spent a large part of his life alone, living his life his way. That was part of what attracted her to him—a man in his mid-thirties who wrangled horses and tourists on a guest ranch. She didn’t want someone who would make too many demands on her. At least she’d thought she didn’t.

  Initially, she’d resisted letting him move in with her. Now it turned out that the situation was reversed, and she was the demanding one.

  The realization struck
her: When it came to sex, she was always the initiator. Always. What did that say about their relationship?

  If they were on a seesaw, she’d be the one up in the air.

  At Kingman she got off at the exit with the Circle K where Dan and Kellee had bought gas.

  The clerk at the Circle K didn’t recognize Dan or Kellee, even though she had worked Friday morning. Laura wasn’t surprised. There were probably fifteen people inside at the moment, and a line of six waiting to pay. The clerk’s eyes kept darting nervously to the people behind Laura.

  Laura turned around, looking for the surveillance camera, and found it situated in the corner of the store opposite the counter. “I’d like to talk to the manager.”

  The clerk picked up the pager and called for Reggie Fortin, clearly relieved that Laura was now someone else’s problem.

  Reggie Fortin led her into the small cubicle that served as the office. He was college age, probably ten years younger than the clerk, and had an ever-present smile that looked as if it were held up by invisible wires.

  “How long do your surveillance tapes go?”

  He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt frayed around the collar, and ghosted with yellow stains under the arms. “One VCR tape lasts twenty-four hours. We store the tapes for thirty-one days.”

  “You have, what, two cameras?”

  “We don’t have an outside camera at this store.”

  Laura asked to see yesterday’s. He asked if she had a warrant—something a lot of people did these days. What with all the cop shows on TV, a lot of people liked to prove they knew the drill.

  Laura said, “I don’t have a warrant.”

  That stopped him. He sat there, tapping his shoe, pretending to think it over. She let the silence stretch; she wasn’t about to help him.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt. This a murder investigation?”

  “It’s important, or I wouldn’t ask.”

  Thinking as she said it that this whole trip was probably pointless. What was she hoping the videotape would show? A black truck pulled up to the pumps, two guys with shotguns picking a fight with Dan?

  He put the tape in the VCR and cued it up to eight a.m. Laura figured that eight would be the earliest Dan and Kellee would get to Kingman; it was a 150-mile drive from Flagstaff. Judging from the shadows on the dam, Laura was pretty sure they didn’t get to Hoover Dam before nine o’clock.

  She watched a parade of people coming into the frame to pay the clerk. Had to stop a couple of times, but none of them looked like Dan or Kellee. No suspicious-looking black trucks either. She was up to ten o’clock now. That was cutting it close.

  “Let’s go back. Start it at seven this time.”

  Dutifully, Reggie Fortin ran it back. She watched again, trying to keep her mind from wandering.

  Then she saw the blond girl. She had passed over her before because she wore jeans, not shorts.

  “Stop.”

  He hit the remote and froze the girl in the frame, diagonal lines shimmering across the top.

  “You want me to go back?”

  “Just a minute.”

  The girl wore jeans and a camisole top, her hair pulled up loosely in a barrette.

  “Go back,” she said. He rewound the tape for a few seconds, then forwarded it again.

  “Stop.”

  The view of the counter came from the far corner of the room, so mostly Laura was seeing the customers’ backs. But the blonde turned back to look at someone behind her, said something to him.

  Laura knew her.

  The blonde was Shana Yates.

  The Forget Me Not Wedding Chapel was a Tudor-style cottage set back from a side street just off the strip, aproned by a close-shaved lawn, the same glitter-green as indoor-outdoor carpeting in the harsh Vegas sun. At the right time of day, the chapel would be swallowed up by the shadow of one of the behemoth hotel-casinos on the strip.

  The sign out front, shocking pink, depicted the silhouette of a bride. She had her hand up to her mouth in a way that Laura thought was sly.

  The hostess who greeted her was fortyish with wild, hennaed gypsy hair. She wore a long-sleeved white lace dress that flounced down to the tops of white cowgirl boots. It was an outfit straight out of the 1980s, right down to the shoulder pads. Her name tag said AUDREY.

  Audrey reached out a ring-encrusted hand and grabbed Laura’s wrist, hauling her into the cramped anteroom. A mullioned bay window with three window seats took up half the room. Each window was dressed with swagged gray velvet over lace, and cute little knickknacks were propped or hung everywhere—all of them dangling tiny price tags.

  “What kind of wedding are you thinking of?” Audrey asked, her large mascaraed eyes sizing Laura up. “We have a very good special going on right now, only a hundred and twenty-nine ninety-nine, it includes photos, video cam, witnesses, limousine service, a rose for the bride, a boutonniere—”

  “I’m not here for a wedding.”Laura displayed her badge wallet and introduced herself, wondering what it was about her that made Audrey offer her the cheapest package. She showed the woman the photographs of Dan and Kellee.

  “I remember them. A really cute couple. Let me go get my wedding book.”She bustled out of the anteroom, rose scent trailing in her wake, and returned with a massive, white leatherette binder festooned with ribbons and bugle beads. She sat down, the book across her knees. “Ah. Here it is.” She turned the book around for Laura to see.

  It was a description of the wedding service package Dan Yates and Kellee Taylor had chosen “Promises” for $199.99.

  The most expensive package, for $499.99, was called “Forever.”

  “It says here the ‘Promises’ package includes photos and video. Do you have them?”

  “The photos haven’t been developed yet, and our videographer is editing the tape. We contract all our photography out to one wedding photographer. The same with the video; that’s … let me think … I-Cam Video Productions. The photos should be done by Wednesday and sent to bride and groom—” Suddenly, she touched her wine-red lacquered nails to her wine-red lips, the realization dawning that something might not be well with the bride and groom. “They’re all right, aren’t they? Nothing’s happened to them?” Her eyes widened. “The shooting at that campground! That was in Williams, wasn’t it? My girlfriend lives there, and I thought of her when I heard about it—”

  “Ma’am, may I have the number for the photographer?”

  “It was them, wasn’t it?” Her expression both stricken and avid. “She was such a beautiful bride. Both those girls were just gorgeous.”

  “Shana Yates?”

  “I think that was her name. The sister. She could have worn something other than jeans, that’s for sure. So it is true? The young couple in the campground—I saw it on the news this morning.”

  Laura didn’t see the point in denying it. By now, Dan and Kellee’s names would have been released to the press. “The sister was a witness to the wedding?”

  “Her and her boyfriend.” Disapproval in her tone when she said “boyfriend.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “I assumed he was her boyfriend, but he could have just been the best man.”

  “What gave you the impression he was her boyfriend?”

  “Just the way she acted around him. There’s a word … proprietary.”

  “Like she owned him?”

  Audrey nodded. “Pretty girl like that, you’d think she could have anybody. This guy was no catch.”

  “Could you describe him?”

  “He was older than her. I’d guess at least mid-thirties. Hard years, too. He just seemed low-class.”

  “Why is that?”

  “His clothes. There’s no smoking in the chapel, so he kept everybody waiting while he finished his cigarette outside. I mean, why bother being a witness at all?”

  “He sounds self-centered.”

  Her eyes lit
up. “That’s it, you put your finger on it. It was all about him.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “Just a minute. We always have the witnesses sign for the license and the book.”

  She came back with a small slip of paper, a name scribbled on it. A name Laura didn’t recognize: Robert Burdette.

  10

  “What’s that?” June Burdette demanded as her son pushed the dolly holding the oversized box up her walkway, doing his best to avoid one of her hundred garden gnomes and whirligigs.

  “You’ll see.”

  “It’s not another washing machine, is it? That last one you bought was junk. I hope you didn’t go and spend even more money on a replacement. I’m used to it now.”

  “It’s not a washing machine.” Bobby Burdette tipped the dolly expertly up the two steps of her front stoop—his years of driving for a moving company were good for something. “Hold the door for me, will you?”

  His mother took her sweet time. He noticed she was wearing a new housecoat, which looked just like her old ones, except the colors weren’t faded.

  With a big sigh, she held the screen door open. “Hurry up, the doctor says I shouldn’t hold my arm in the same position a long time; my rotator cuff’s gone. It’s just bone on bone. Watch the recliner!” She let the door swing shut behind them and followed him in. The room, as usual, was as gloomy as a cave.

  “I don’t know why you have to keep buying me things. I don’t want any more clutter.”

  “Wait until you see this.”

  “I’ll wait in the kitchen. I’m watching Days of our Lives.”

  Ten minutes later, he went into the kitchen. She was sitting at the Formica table, hunched over the thirteen-inch TV he’d had in his room when he was a kid.

  “Come and take a look.”

  She heaved herself to her feet. “What is it this time?”

  “It’s a surprise, Ma.”

  Her mouth squinched up in distaste. “You don’t have money to throw away. If you ever did earn a decent living, you’d spend it all in a weekend.”

  He could feel his blood pressure rising, took a deep breath. “It’s a present. For your birthday.”