Carmen shook her head, probably wishing she hadn’t spilled any information at all. As I said, I didn’t know her, which meant she didn’t know me, either. Her loyalties lay with Greer, of course, and I had figured out that she wasn’t given to idle gossip. If I hoped to get anything else out of her, I would have to convince her that the boss lady was in grave peril first.
“Mrs. Pennington,” I said, “is being blackmailed. And today—just a little while ago, in fact—somebody called on this phone and threatened her life.”
“Madre de Dios,” Carmen whispered, staring at me. “You call police?”
“Not yet,” I answered. “I want to handle this very carefully, because whoever these people are, I think they mean business. I have a—contact at the sheriff’s department.”
Oh, Tucker and I had made contact, all right.
I felt suddenly pantyless, even though I was wearing bikini briefs fresh from my underwear drawer in the guesthouse bedroom.
“I’ll talk to Detective Darroch when I see him tonight,” I added, hoping I sounded moderate. I’d be doing a lot more than seeing Tucker, come eventide, if he had his way. And I knew he would, because where he was concerned, I was downright easy. “Right now, Carmen, if you know anything else about this, please tell me.”
“I don’t know about blackmailing,” she said, and my gut told me she was lying. She glanced at the printouts on Shiloh, the numbers scrawled on a sheet of notepaper.
I saw her bristle.
“Greer has been understandably upset over her husband’s death,” I said. Would that I’d had time to hide the evidence of my snooping, but I hadn’t. “She’s scared half out of her mind, Carmen. Too scared to tell me anything, so I can help.”
Carmen weighed my words, studying me with what appeared to be mingled suspicion and a growing concern for Greer’s safety. Her glance strayed again to the printouts. For all she knew, I was the one blackmailing Greer.
We were at an impasse.
Lots of questions, not very many answers.
I remembered Greer’s prescription painkillers and checked the label for a physician’s name. Alex Pennington, M.D.
Interesting, but not unusual. A lot of doctors prescribe medicine for their families, and for themselves. Still, it occurred to me that Alex might have given Greer something lethal, trying to solve one of his many problems the no-muss, no-fuss way. That problem being Greer.
She’d run him into bankruptcy, after all, contributing to Jack Pennington’s alleged decision to hijack him and then gun him down in the desert. And who knew what else had happened between them?
I popped the lid on the pill bottle and shook one out, hoping I could persuade Jolie, a forensics expert, to run a tox report on it. Surely she still had access to lab facilities. Most likely, though, the stuff was just what the label said it was: migraine medication.
I handed the bottle to Carmen. “I have to leave,” I said, dropping the tiny white pill into my jacket pocket and hoping the seams were good. Then I produced a business card, newly printed with “Sheepshanks, Sheepshanks and Sheepshanks—Private Investigations” and my phone numbers. “Could you stay with Mrs. Pennington, Carmen? Overnight?”
Carmen took the card, glanced down at it, considered the question briefly—it was safe to assume she had a life outside the walls of Casa Pennington—then nodded, the set of her face conveying resolve rather than resignation.
“Call me if there are any problems,” I said. “And keep the doors locked. Look through the peephole before you let anybody in.”
Carmen started looking scared again.
I waited for her to cross herself, but she didn’t.
I headed for the door, eager to get out before another phone rang, precipitating another crisis. “And Carmen?”
She stared at me bleakly.
“Do you know Dr. Pennington’s son, Jack?”
She nodded, still speechless.
“Does he have a key to this house?” I asked.
Another nod.
“Have the locks changed. Today. And get a new security code for the alarm system, too.”
At this, Carmen actually paled. I hoped she wouldn’t grab her big purse, rush to her car and boogie for home as soon as I was gone. “Mr. Jack—?”
“Could be dangerous,” I said.
She followed me to the front door, in order to lock it behind me, and that gave me a chance to ask one more question.
“Do you know where Mrs. Pennington keeps her gun?”
“It was stolen, this gun,” Carmen answered very quietly, after gulping once. “She kept it in a wall safe, in her closet.”
I figured it was time to let the poor woman off the hook. As it was, she’d probably try to barricade the door with the entryway breakfront as soon as it closed behind me. “Try not to worry,” I said. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but you can never be too careful.”
I slipped out, stood in the brick-paved portico for a few moments.
I didn’t like leaving Greer, even in Carmen’s care. It froze my blood to know that Jack Pennington had a key to the front door, and almost certainly knew the alarm code. Come to that, he could let himself into the guesthouse, too, if he wanted to.
It was time to shop for that Glock I’d been wanting.
It was definitely time.
* * *
GUNS ARE PLENTIFUL in Arizona, and a lot of unlikely people pack heat—soccer moms, TV talk-show hosts and even preachers. It’s that kind of state; the Old West is still part of the collective psyche. There’s no helmet law to keep motorcyclists from bashing their brains out on roads, and when it comes to daylight saving time, just forget it. When the rest of the country springs forward or falls back, Arizonans don’t adjust their watches.
I drove to a shop in Cave Creek, the kind of joint where they sell postcards, tacky souvenir fridge magnets, mugs and ashtrays, T-shirts, mineral specimens and plastic rabbits with antlers.
Oh, and serious firepower, too, though that’s often a sideline.
“I want a Glock,” I told the clerk, who looked as though he might belong to one of those radical patriot groups who gather around pool tables and in detached garages amid rusted-out pickup trucks, where they smoke, drink beer and plot the overthrow of the United States government.
Bubba, who was missing several teeth, needed to wash his hair and had a coiled snake and the words Don’t Tread On Me tattooed on his right forearm, straightened behind the grimy souvenir counter and looked me over. I saw recognition register. When guys like Bubba actually think, it startles the rest of their body, and causes a visible chain reaction—twitching, restless fingers, shifty eyes and some foot shuffling.
“I’ve seen you around Bad-Ass Bert’s,” Bubba said. “And on TV, too.”
Media fame can be a burden. I dug in my purse for my wallet.
“Shame about ole Bert biting the dust the way he did,” Bubba went on when I didn’t speak. “I heard he left the bar to you in his will. You gonna open it up for business anytime soon?”
“Probably,” I said. The way my P.I. career was going, I’d need the income, but the truth is, it made me sad to think of setting foot inside the saloon again. Russell, the basset hound, wouldn’t be around, and neither would Bert. Besides, I’d had some traumatic experiences there.
“Why a Glock?” Bubba asked conversationally.
Because Kay Scarpetta carries one in Patricia Cornwell’s books didn’t seem like a good answer. Nor could I admit to the other reason—that my boyfriend, the cop, owned two.
I leaned in, even though it was a rash move, considering Bubba practiced poor oral hygiene and needed a more reliable deodorant product than he was currently using. “Gun of choice for private investigators everywhere,” I said seriously.
“I saw in the papers where you
were a dick,” Bubba said, bending, presumably to bring some of his wares out from under the counter for my inspection.
I let the dick remark pass, even though it was rife with possibilities for sarcastic comebacks.
“You know how to shoot one of these things?” Bubba inquired after laying two battered plastic cases on top of the counter.
I planned on getting Jolie to teach me, or maybe Tucker. There might even be a Damn Fool’s Guide on the subject. Suffice it to say, if I had to do anything technical, like release the safety or slam in a cartridge magazine to qualify to buy the gun, I’d be leaving Bubba’s unarmed.
“Yes,” I lied. “Of course I do.”
Bubba opened the cases. The Glocks gleamed inside, one black, compact, with a short barrel, one shiny steel, with a long one.
I went with black, because it looked like Tucker’s gun and would be easier to carry in my purse. Plus, black goes with everything.
“Bullets?” Bubba asked mildly.
“Lots of them. Whatever fits. And definitely hollow-point.”
Bubba whistled. “They’ll do some damage, them hollow-points,” he said, smiling conspiratorially.
“How much?” I asked, wallet in hand.
“Well, these here guns are secondhand,” Bubba mused. Then he named a price that made me catch my breath. Glocks, alas, are not cheap.
I imagined Jack Pennington possibly abducting and then gunning down his own father in the desert. I’d never met him, but he was active in the community, and I’d seen his picture in the paper a lot.
He might come after Greer—or me, since I intended to dig around in his background a little.
I thought about the caller on Greer’s throwaway cell phone.
And I wrote a hefty check.
I wanted to ask if I needed a permit, but that would have revealed my ignorance to a degree even Bubba might notice. At the time, all I wanted was a way to save myself if I woke up some night and found somebody standing over my bed in a ski mask, so I didn’t worry about the legalities.
Back in the car, I stuck the Glock under the front seat, still in its case, and sat there in the gravel parking lot, shaking and sweating a little.
Then I got a grip. If Jolie could manage a gun, so could I. No problem.
I’d no sooner gotten that grip when I lost it again, flashed back in time to an August night in my childhood, when both my parents were shot to death at close range. I was five when it happened, but now, at twenty-eight, I could smell the coppery scent of blood, see it lying in crimson pools, reflecting the light.
My stomach seized with a painful wrench.
Good thing it had already ground the sausage biscuit down to nothing.
I drew deep breaths until the memories began to subside.
My cell phone rang, and this time I was glad of the interruption. “Mojo Sheepshanks,” I said.
The caller was Helen Erland. “You can get in to see Vince anytime this afternoon,” she said dully. “Just show up at the jail. His lawyer’s already made the arrangements.”
“That’s good,” I said, blessing the unknown public defender. “Are you okay?” I could have chewed off my tongue after I uttered that question. Of course she wasn’t okay. Her daughter was dead, and her husband, who might have been innocent but might also have been Gillian’s killer, was in jail.
Still, I was heartened, because I knew I’d be able to tell if Vince Erland was guilty if I could look him in the eye, just the way I always knew when a slot machine was about to pay off.
That’s why they called me Mojo.
“Oh, I’m just dandy,” Helen said, and hung up on me.
The phone immediately rang again.
This time it was Tucker.
“Hey,” I said, still feeling a little shaky.
“Hey,” he replied. “What are you doing?”
“Shopping,” I told him, torn between hoping he’d say he couldn’t make it to my place that night and hoping he’d offer to pick up dinner on the way. “What are you doing?”
He lowered his voice, so he probably wasn’t alone. “Anticipating,” he said.
Heat suffused my body, which had been stone-cold and clammy only moments before, and I got a little damp. “Did you check out the Jack Pennington lead?”
Tucker sighed.
“Just asking,” I said cheerfully.
“He’s clean, Moje. Pennington’s never had so much as a parking ticket.”
I felt discouraged, but the prospect of hot sex with Tucker did a lot to raise my spirits. “That doesn’t mean he’s not a murderer,” I pointed out.
“Can we not talk business?” Tucker asked.
“We can talk about dinner,” I offered. “What are you bringing?”
He laughed. “I’m in charge of dinner?”
“Unless you want me to cook,” I said.
“Scary thought,” he answered. “How about Chinese takeout?”
“Works for me.”
“Moje?”
He sounded so serious that I was scared he’d been planning to break bad news over the chow mein and kung pao chicken, and had just now decided not to wait. I expected him to say something like “Allison and I have decided to try again” or “I’ve just been diagnosed with a terminal disease.”
“What?” I asked, barely whispering.
“Don’t wear underpants,” Tucker replied.
Chapter Nine
AFTER I LEFT BUBBA’S, I headed for downtown Phoenix and the jail. Parking was a bitch, but I finally found a spot, locked up the car, went inside and introduced myself at the reception desk, all the while keeping a sharp eye out for Tucker. He was bound to find out I’d been to visit Vince Erland, but I wanted it to be after the fact, when he couldn’t interfere, not before, when he could hustle me out of there.
Getting in was remarkably easy. I was almost disappointed, since I’d been all geared up for a bureaucratic hassle of some kind. I was sure they’d say the public defender hadn’t called, the paperwork was lost, the prisoner had been carried off by visitors from another planet.
Instead, I was handed a clip-on pass, herded through a metal detector and shown to the visitors’ area.
It was right out of a TV movie. Thick glass wall, with a chair and a phone on either side. Graffiti scratched into the counter.
I sat down and waited.
When Vince Erland arrived, wearing the regulation orange jail outfit, I sized him up. He was tall and super-skinny, with a bad complexion and greasy hair, reminiscent of Bubba. His mouse-brown tresses were thinning on top, but the rest of it was long, and pulled back into a ponytail. His eyes were a cold, smoky gray.
He sat down, reached for the phone receiver and said, “I wondered what somebody named Mojo Sheepshanks would look like.” His gaze wandered lazily over me. “Now I know.”
“I’m here to ask some questions about the day Gillian died,” I said.
“Yeah,” he answered, leaning so far back in his chair that I half expected him to slide out of it. “Helen told me she hired you.”
“What happened, Mr. Erland?”
“Vince,” he said, as if we’d met in a bar and he was about to ask me to dance.
Something burned in the back of my throat. “Vince, then,” I replied, sitting up very straight. Then I waited.
“I picked Gilly up after her dance class,” he said. “We couldn’t afford the lessons, and after all, the kid was stone-deaf, but Helen insisted she could feel the music....”
“Go on,” I said evenly when his voice fell away.
“She wanted a damn dog. It was all she talked about—waving her hands around all the time. So I promised her I’d look into it. That’s all I said—that I’d look into it. I figured she’d forget the whole thing eventua
lly. Hell, I’ve been out of work for six months, and Helen barely makes enough to keep us going.”
Everything inside me soured. Vince Erland might be telling the truth, but even if he hadn’t killed Gillian, he was a son of a bitch. “You know sign language?” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “But the kid managed to get her point across just the same.”
“She wanted a dog,” I recapped, to get him back on track.
“We stopped off for milk and beer, and I broke it to her that there wasn’t going to be any dog. She took off—I thought she’d gone to the bathroom or something, or decided to walk home. I looked all over the store, and then I drove back to the trailer, expecting to pick her up along the way and give her what-for for skipping out like that. There’s all kinds of creeps out there.” He cocked a thumb to indicate the outside world, which was ironic in itself, since he was sitting in creep-central. “They’d as soon kill you as look at you.”
My skin crawled, but I managed to project sympathetic detachment. “You didn’t call the police or alert the store manager when you realized Gillian was gone?”
Erland went a muddy color that clashed with his jail clothes. “The cops are making a big deal out of that,” he said. “The kid was always flying off the handle, taking off—look at her crossways, and she’d be over to Chelsea’s or God knows where else. I thought she’d gone home, or maybe to find Helen. I didn’t get worried till I got home and called around a little. Nobody’d seen her, it turned out, so I called the police. Next thing I know, I’m on my way downtown for ‘questioning.’ Then it’s some bullshit about parking tickets. My lawyer’s going to get me out of here, though. They’re running out of excuses to hold me, and mark my words, lady, they haven’t got shit for evidence.”
I wondered what Helen Erland had seen in this man.
Had he killed Gillian?
The mojo failed me. I didn’t know.
He was a jerk, that was obvious. But that didn’t mean he’d murder a child.
“Helen told me you saw the kid’s ghost,” he said. He sleazed upward in his chair, leaned forward and thumped the glass hard with a middle finger. “Listen up,” he went on. “Here’s the only reason I agreed to talk to you. Stay away from my wife. She’s got problems enough without a bunch of hocus-pocus, I-see-dead-people crap. You got that, Mojo Sheepshit?”
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