Sketch a Falling Star

by Sharon Pape

  “Why don’t you go sit down while I register,” Rory said. “Then we can grab some coffee and talk.”

  “Register? Don’t be silly, you’re going to share my room. It’s not like I can sleep in two beds at once.”

  “Okay, then it’s straight to the coffee.” She threaded her arm through her aunt’s and headed for the table, where the waiter was setting out a platter of miniature Danish. Once they’d fixed the coffee to their liking and each chosen one of the breakfast pastries, Helene led the way to a couple of unoccupied chairs.

  “Have the police finished interviewing everyone from the troupe?” Rory asked as they sat down and set their food on the little table between them.

  “I think so, but they made it clear they want us to stay put here until they tell us otherwise. In fact,” she said lowering her voice and leaning closer to her niece, “one of them is still here at the hotel. I guess they’re afraid we might make a run for it.”

  Rory smiled. “I’m not surprised—you’re certainly a shifty-looking bunch.”

  Helene smiled back, and some of the tension in her face relaxed. She took a hearty bite out of her cherry Danish.

  “I don’t suppose the police mentioned where they were going or what they were looking into?” Rory tasted the coffee, which was anemic in spite of the grounds floating on the surface. She would have tossed it, but it was the only available source of caffeine at the moment.

  Helene wiped a bit of frosting from the side of her mouth. “Funny you should ask,” she whispered. “I overheard them say they wanted to talk to the people at the weather bureau again—something about a breakdown in communications.”

  It certainly sounded as if Preston’s death was heading toward a verdict of “accidental,” with the catchall of “human error” shouldering the blame. If the investigation was able to get past all the inevitable finger-pointing and half-truths, the person or persons who’d committed that error would most likely be fired. The Navajo had to protect the important tourist trade. People making plans to visit the state and the slot canyons needed to know that not only had justice been served, but that they and their families would be safe to vacation and sightsee there in the future. In spite of Zeke’s sense that Preston’s death was not as open and shut as it seemed, Rory was confident the autopsy and evidence would prove her right. After all, planning a successful murder by flash flood had to be harder than winning the lottery.

  She was enjoying a surprisingly good cinnamon-raisin Danish when a man in a dove-gray police uniform entered the lobby through the front door. His uniform was fresh and stiff, the crease in his pants so sharply pressed that he had to be a rookie. Rory figured him for twenty-three, tops. He was lean but solidly built, his black hair pulled back in a leather thong. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the high cheekbones that anchored the broad planes of his face. As an artist, she’d always been fascinated by the topography of the skull and the way it shaped a person’s appearance.

  Helene bobbed her head in the officer’s direction as if to say there’s one of them right now. If she was trying to be discreet, she missed the mark entirely. The officer gave her a brief nod in return as if he thought she was greeting him.

  “Oh great,” Helene groaned softly. “Now he probably thinks I’m flirting with him.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Rory said. “You didn’t break any laws, even if you are old enough to be his mother.”

  Helene laughed for real this time, her hands flying to her mouth to muffle the sound in consideration of the recent tragedy. Rory felt all the tight muscles in her body relax a little. Her aunt was already on her way back to being the upbeat, quirky woman Rory knew and loved.

  She washed down the last of the Danish with a swallow of coffee that was now tepid as well as weak. Telling Helene she’d be right back, she headed over to the table, where the officer was filling a cup for himself. She waited until he’d finished stirring in sugar and milk before addressing him.

  “Hi. I’m Rory McCain,” she said, extending her hand. “Helene Brody’s niece.”

  “Walter Begay. Pleased to meet you.” He gave her hand a good firm shake, which caused the coffee in his other hand to slop up to the rim of the cup. His English sounded a little off to Rory, but it took her a minute to figure out why. Although he spoke with a typical southwestern accent, the rhythm beneath the words was different, no doubt a holdover from his native Navajo tongue.

  “I was in Tucson when my aunt called to tell me what happened,” Rory said. “I drove up immediately.”

  “A terrible, uh, a really terrible thing,” Walter said, glancing down at his shoes as if they suddenly required his undivided attention. “My, uh, condolences.”

  Rory tried to put him at ease. “Thanks. I know how difficult it can be to deal with a deceased’s family and friends when you’re trying to investigate a case.”

  Walter looked up, bobbing his head in agreement and apparently relieved to move past the awkward etiquette of death.

  “I worked as a detective back on Long Island,” she went on, slurring over “worked” so that it might as easily have been “work.” She was hoping he’d consider her a fellow officer and let down his guard. “How’s the investigation going?” she asked before he could think too much about what he’d heard.

  “Pretty much routine,” he said, hitching up his trousers with his free hand. “Except it’s been a long time since anything like this happened. Those canyons are so narrow and winding—if you get a good rain going up north of there, the water will flood them out in next to no time.”

  “I heard there was some kind of mix-up in communications at the weather bureau,” Rory pushed. She felt a bit guilty for taking advantage of a newbie but not guilty enough to stop.

  Walter tried his coffee and seemed fine with it. There was truly no accounting for taste.

  “You see,” he said in an easy tone of camaraderie, “how it works is that the weather bureau sends advisories to the companies that run the tours through the canyons. Slightest chance of rain shuts them right down, no two ways about it. But yesterday that warning either didn’t go out in time or it didn’t reach the right people. Somewhere the chain broke down.”

  So simple, so nice and clinical. But Rory had learned firsthand—when her uncle Mac died suddenly—that one person’s detached statement of fact was another person’s devastating loss. For the first time since Helene’s hysterical phone call, she wondered about Preston’s family. What had their phone call been like?

  Chapter 5

  Exhausted and with little else to do at that early hour, Rory and Helene went to their room, hoping to grab some much-needed sleep. Two hours later, the telephone on the nightstand jolted Rory awake as effectively as the alarm on her cell phone had less than eight hours earlier. She located the receiver by Braille and issued a grudging “hello,” trying to remember where she was. Too many hotel rooms in too few days. The sound of her aunt Helene snoring loudly from the bed next to hers quickly reeled in her memory. Either Helene hadn’t heard the phone, or she figured Rory could handle it. In any case, the call was for Rory—the Navajo police were requesting an interview. She tried to tell the caller that she wouldn’t be able to add anything new to their investigation, but he remained insistent, and since it was never a good idea to argue with the police, she decided to let them discover that truth for themselves.

  She pulled on the clothes she’d been wearing when she arrived and splashed her face with cold water to clear out the last cobwebs of sleep. She shoved her room key and cell phone into her pocket and left Helene still snoring away, a fact she would surely deny if it ever came up. Since there was no point in them both being awake, Rory put out the “Please do not disturb” sign before going down to the lobby for her command performance.

  What a difference a few hours made. The lobby was buzzing with life, although not the kind with microphones and TV cameras. That was still several hours away. The elderly night clerk had been replaced by two vivacious young wo
men, who were helping guests register or check out. As people learned that the slot canyons wouldn’t reopen until the police completed their investigation, there was some grumbling and scrambling to make alternate plans. During her tenure with the police department, Rory had found that most people reacted to a fatal accident with compassion and sympathy until it inconvenienced them. Preston’s death was no different.

  Looking around she saw that four actors from the troupe were now seated where the three had been when she’d first arrived. Adam Caspian’s daughter Sophia had joined them, and someone had arranged for another chair to be set up to accommodate her. They all had the dull, dazed look of survivors, grateful to have escaped Preston’s fate but unsure why they’d been spared. Rory scanned the lobby again but still didn’t see anyone who looked official. She was wondering how to go about locating the detective who wanted to speak to her when she heard her name. She turned and found herself looking into eyes as hard and black as river rock.

  “I’m Detective Daniel Joe,” the owner of those eyes said. He was dressed in a uniform similar to the one his rookie was wearing. He gave her a quick dip of the head in lieu of a handshake; she reciprocated in kind. “We’ve been using the manager’s office to conduct our interviews,” he went on, heading off in that direction before Rory could summon up a comment or question. She followed behind him, thinking his young rookie could teach him a thing or two about the social graces, when the phone in her pocket started to vibrate. She took it out and saw that it was her friend, Leah. She’d get back to her after her chat with the detective.

  The manager’s office was directly off the main hall, just steps from the lobby. Joe stopped at the door and ushered her in. The room was on the small side, a desk and three chairs making it seem more cramped. A keyboard and monitor dominated the desk, which held several neat stacks of paper along with some framed family photos.

  The detective went around the desk and sat in the high-backed, padded chair behind it. “Take a seat,” he said, nodding to the two lesser chairs in front of the desk. Rory thanked him and sat down. He might be socially inept, but she had her standards.

  Joe leaned back in the chair and studied her for a minute. Rory had to restrain herself from telling him point-blank that although this little act of his might succeed in intimidating others, it didn’t stand a chance of working on her. In fact, if he wanted an affidavit to that effect, she knew a certain federal marshal who would be happy to supply one. She actually found herself wishing she could summon Zeke to materialize right then and there.

  “I assume you have some questions you want to ask me?” she said instead.

  Joe’s eyes narrowed with irritation, as if this were a scripted scene and she’d had the audacity to step on his lines.

  “Detective?” she prompted.

  He leaned forward, settling his arms on the desk and causing a pile of papers to cascade onto the floor. “Lying to a police officer doesn’t get you started on the right foot around here,” he said finally. “But then you should already know that, Ms. McCain, having been one yourself.”

  Rory hadn’t seen that coming, and she definitely didn’t like being sucker punched. “Excuse me?” she said stalling for time to consider the best response.

  “You told Officer Begay you’re a detective back in New York.”

  So her little word dance had twirled around to stomp on her toes. She was surprised Joe had actually checked her out. Didn’t he have better things to do with his time—like investigating Preston’s death?

  “I told him I worked as a detective, which is absolutely true,” Rory said, realizing that Leah’s call had probably been to give her a heads-up. “I can’t be responsible for what Officer Begay thought he heard.”

  “He was mighty sure about it,” Joe insisted, clearly unwilling to let go of the subject.

  “Again, I can only tell you what I said, not what someone else might have heard.” If she’d thought Begay would repeat their conversation to his superiors, she would never have spoken to him. Okay, who was she kidding? She’d wanted information, and Begay had been the quickest path to it at the time.

  “I don’t know how things work in the Big Apple, what with all the corruption you’ve got there, but out here things are a lot simpler. We take our officers at their word, and we don’t take lightly to folks looking to play us for fools.”

  “That was never my intention,” Rory said. She didn’t bother to explain that Long Island wasn’t technically part of New York City. She was pretty sure he wasn’t in a learning frame of mind. “I apologize if I gave you or officer Begay that impression.” Sometimes it was just smarter to act contrite. To be fair, Detective Joe had probably dealt with one too many smart-aleck tourists over the years.

  “Where were you at the time of Preston Wright’s death?” he asked, abruptly switching topics.

  “In Tucson, doing research,” she replied evenly. The way things were going, she couldn’t very well lie and say she was visiting a nonexistent friend unless she was interested in some new accommodations at the local Navajo jail. “I’m sure the librarian at the Arizona Historical Society will vouch for me.”

  Joe wasn’t taking notes, which told Rory that he wasn’t actually interested in her answers. He was just trying to make her sweat as payback for her transgression. She toyed briefly with the idea of breaking down in tears and confessing that she’d arranged for the rain and the flood specifically to kill Preston. But since Joe didn’t seem to have a sense of humor, she decided it wouldn’t be in her best interests to bait him further.

  He asked her how well she’d known the deceased and how she’d describe his relationships with the rest of the troupe. She said that she’d barely exchanged two sentences with the man and that she had no idea about how he interacted with the other actors, since she wasn’t even part of the troupe. He seemed about to follow up with another question from his bottomless bag of tricks when his cell phone rang. He took the call and listened for less than ten seconds before hanging up. Rising from his chair, he dismissed Rory as if he were suddenly eager to be rid of her; he exited the office while she was still seated. Curious, she followed him out of the room and into the lobby, wondering what bigger fish had just beached itself on his shore.

  Chapter 6

  As Rory watched, Detective Joe strode across the lobby in the direction of his rookie. Begay was standing near the entryway beside a trim blonde who appeared to be in her sixties. She was wearing the same shell-shocked expression as the members of the troupe and kept dabbing at her red-rimmed eyes with a tissue. Begay was once again examining his shoes, the floor, any place other than the woman’s face. He looked even more uncomfortable than when he’d expressed his sympathies to Rory earlier, which led her to assume that the blonde was a close relative of Preston’s, probably his mother. That would also explain Detective Joe’s eagerness to meet her. He’d probably been waiting for her to formally identify the body and perhaps fill in some blanks in his report.

  After a moment’s debate, Rory started walking nonchalantly toward them, hoping to get close enough to overhear what they were saying. She told herself she wasn’t looking for trouble. As far as she knew, there was no law against walking around a public space like a hotel lobby. Besides, Joe’s back was to her.

  She saw Begay introduce the blonde to his boss, who not only dipped his head, but also shook her hand—VIP treatment, coming from Joe. Before Rory had navigated half the distance to the three, the officers whisked the woman out the front door.

  Robbed of her destination, Rory stopped where she was, a human jetty to the ebb and flow of people moving through the lobby. She was trying to decide what to do next when she noticed that Sophia Caspian was waving her over to join them. Sophia, who was two years Rory’s junior, had been seated next to her on the flight west, and the two young women had spent most of the time in conversation. She was bright and funny, and to Rory’s artistic eye, quite beautiful. Although her individual features would never earn a ten by
any plastic surgeon’s standards, the combination was striking, the whole much more than the simple sum of its parts.

  It didn’t take Rory long to decide that some idle chitchat with Sophia and the others was vastly more appealing than listening to her aunt snore, so she headed in their direction. Once they’d all exchanged greetings, Dorothy Johnson excused herself and rose from her seat with the aid of a cane. Her left foot was encased in a bootlike contraption that was making it difficult for her to maneuver. Whenever Rory had seen her at the theatre, she’d been as vivacious and spry as the younger members of the troupe. Even in her present condition, it was hard to believe she was courting seventy.

  “I’m off to see if I can catch me a sandman,” she said, shaking her head. “The older I get, the more sleep eludes me. And after our little skirmish with mortality, well…enough said…I’ll see you all later.” She limped off to the elevator.

  As Rory settled into the empty seat, Richard Ames, pathologist and amateur actor, inquired how she’d enjoyed being interviewed by Detective Joe. The trademark British accent he’d held on to in spite of some thirty years in the United States added a delightful kick to his sarcasm. Tall, with graying hair and a strong jawline that had only started to soften now that he’d hit middle age, his accent suited him so thoroughly that it seemed to have been etched into his DNA.

  “The detective is nothing if not thorough,” Rory replied. Until she had a better sense of these people, she didn’t want to be the first to cast any weightier stones. It was a concern that became academic the moment Adam Caspian opened his mouth.

  “If you ask me, Joe’s like the dictator of a two-bit banana republic,” Adam said, with a snap to his words that Rory hadn’t expected. Whenever she’d seen him in a play, he was cast in the part of the slightly nerdy, kindhearted friend of the lead. He had a round, open face exaggerated by round wire-rimmed glasses and a rounded paunch where his waist should have been. Sophia had clearly inherited her looks from her mother. Rory wondered how often she thanked her lucky stars.