Desert Jade

by C. J. Shane

  “Why?”

  “He’s an asshole. He just doesn’t like me. I tried to date this girl he likes, and that pissed him off.”

  “What’s the girl’s name?”

  “Emily something. I don’t remember.”

  “What happened after you mom fell over?”

  “I was so shocked. I don’t know what I did.”

  “How about your dad?”

  “He came from the house. He ran to my mom when he saw her there. Then he called 911 on his phone.”

  Letty sat back.

  “Have you had any contact with anyone else about this?

  “The police interviewed me and my dad. That’s all.”

  “One more thing. In the report, it says that Gomez said something to you about Chinese girls. What was that about?” Letty was told this by Emily Castro, but implied that it was in the police report.

  Travis couldn’t hide his shock and dismay at this question. He shook his head from side to side.

  “No,” he said vehemently. “Nobody said anything about Chinese girls. I don’t know anything about that. No.”

  Letty was sure he was lying.

  The waiter came with Travis’s meal.

  Letty stood up. “Thank you, Travis. Your information has been helpful. Again, I want to say how sorry I am that you lost your mother.”

  Travis mumbled and looked down.

  Letty headed back to the Lyle home in the Sam Hughes district. First she drove around the block and through the alley, carefully observing the neighbors’ potential views of the Lyle property. She noticed, too, that there was a side door into the Lyle house quite near the wrought-iron gate and hedge. The door was not mentioned in the police report.

  Letty knocked on the Lyles’ front door. Fred Lyle answered.

  “Mr. Lyle?”

  “Yes,” Lyle said abruptly. He looked a lot like his son except for carrying a few more pounds and a scowl on his face.

  “My name is Letty Valdez, and I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into the death of your wife. I’m very sorry to hear about her death. I was wondering if you could talk with me for a few minutes and answer a few questions.”

  “I already talked to the police.”

  “Yes, but we’re hoping to gain more information to make a stronger case.”

  “Who did you say you work for?”

  “I didn’t. My client wants to remain anonymous.”

  Lyle stepped back and slammed the door in Letty’s face.

  Chapter 15

  Back in her office, Letty first called home. Will was fine. Clarice was with him. Bring home some pizza was their urgent request.

  She turned on her desktop computer and immersed herself for over an hour. She looked first to see what she could find on Kevin Kwok. The triad 49er Bao had rented a car at the airport under Kwok’s name, and Zhou wanted to know if Letty could find out more about him.

  Kwok’s case was similar to Carlos Lopez’s, but without any mention of missing money as in the case of Carlos. Kwok had been a moderately-successful real estate agent at the time of his disappearance, which was around the same time that Carlos had disappeared. Letty ran through those personal and financial records that she could legally access. No police record, only one speeding ticket. His bank account was still open but had seen no activity on it for nearly a year. His Facebook page was still there, but there hadn’t been any postings for the same length of time. His parents had reported him a missing person, but despite police efforts, there had been no sign of him at all. Letty looked for credit-card use, typically a real giveaway of where a person was living. There had been no charges made at all since Kwok’s disappearance. Same with his cell phone. No calls out, and since his bill wasn’t paid, the service had been cancelled.

  Looks like Kevin Kwok may have met the same fate at Carlos, Letty thought to herself. Somehow he had crossed paths with the triad gang, and he had come out on the short end. Maybe he tried to rent or sell them some real estate. Then maybe he discovered what they were up to and threatened to report them, or maybe he tried to get in on their smuggling activities and take a cut. No way to know at this point. Maybe he or his remains would turn up at some point.

  On a whim, Letty first looked for anything she could find about Barbara Lyle. The social aspect of Barbara’s life was much stronger than any business or financial affairs. She appeared to be a socially well-connected Tucson matron with an affluent businessman for a husband. She was on the board of several charities and a local arts organization. Her Facebook posts had frequent comments about these organizations and events she attended in their names.

  Letty began looking for responses to Barbara Lyle’s posts. If she could identify a close friend of Barbara Lyle’s, she could talk to that person and determine if Lyle had revealed any secrets that pertained to the Chinese affair. She found a couple of potential names in Mrs. Lyle’s Facebook postings, both women, and searched for them. They were both neighbors of the Lyles.

  Next Letty took on Fred Lyle. She started by looking at public records about his business, social, and financial dealings. She decided to stick to the records available to anyone, and not try any tricks to get into databases that she technically wasn’t supposed to access.

  Nearly five years earlier, Letty learned that Fred Lyle had come perilously close to total financial ruin. He had been forced to file for bankruptcy and sell off many of his business assets as well as his home. His business empire had been rather extensive. He had owned a real estate company and a citywide chain of furniture and appliance stores, and he had operated a maintenance-and-repair business that provided services to numerous businesses in the city.

  Letty thought that the loss of the Lyle home, a three-million-dollar estate in the Catalina Foothills above Skyline Drive, must have been particularly hard on a woman like Barbara Lyle. Despite the economic difficulties, Lyle was able to scrap together enough money to purchase a home in the Sam Hughes district that was socially acceptable if not as ostentatious as the Foothills estate. He was determined to recover his losses and maintain his social standing.

  And recover Lyle did. Three years later, he was doing well financially although exactly how he was making his money wasn’t exactly clear. He had revived his maintenance operation, and it seemed to be doing well enough.

  Connecting Lyle to weapons smuggling, or any other kind of smuggling, was going to be a much more difficult task. Finding information about a person’s gun purchase and ownership was virtually impossible. Privacy laws protected the gun owners. Finding information on gun vendors was somewhat easier. Gun shop owners, even those with a “shop” in their home, were required to have a Federal Firearms License. These vendors were required by law to keep a registry of firearms sales, and a copy of Form 4473, "Firearms Transaction Record," that documented each gun purchase. The buyer had to give his name and other personal data on the form. This information was not made public. However, the law enforcement agency Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives – known commonly as ATF – was allowed access to these records in the course of an investigation. Sale of a gun by a private citizen to a private citizen required no records whatsoever.

  This meant that, if Lyle had been purchasing guns from vendors with a Federal Firearms License, there would records available – but not to Letty. She would have to turn this over to Lawyer Cameron and her friend Detective Adelita García to open the records. Letty needed some crumb Lyle might have left behind in a trail that would tell her if he was involved in weapons purchases or sales.

  Letty took another approach in her research. Facebook again. The giant social media platform had made it clear that gun sales and trade were not allowed. And yet there were numerous “pages” and “groups” devoted to various topics like “gun photography” and “recreational guns.” There were designated “places” such as Steve’s Gun Shop located about a ten-minute drive from Letty’s office. Steve was telling the Facebook world that he had some new Ruger Precision Rif
les in stock, and he invited everyone to come by and check them out. It was just an invitation, not a direct attempt to sell. Yeah, right, Letty thought cynically.

  Most of the pages, groups and places had comments made by individual Facebook users. She found Fred Lyle’s personal page, then did a search to see if he had made any comments on the gun pages. Yes. Letty quickly began to feel as if she’d stumbled into a huge spider web that connected Lyle to weapons. He had made occasional comments on several of these pages, and even left a review or two. However, most comments were over a year old.

  Of course, Letty thought to herself. If he had been smuggling girls and drugs to the north with the Chinese, he wouldn’t have been concerned about being associated with guns and gun sales. But if he had begun smuggling guns south with his Chinese pals, he would have become much more circumspect about associating the name Lyle with the word “gun.”

  There was more work to do, but Letty would need help. She made quick calls to both Jessica Cameron and Adelita García. She asked them to meet her early the next morning at Jade’s home. She told them that she had made some progress, and now it was time to bring them in. She called Zhou and told him that they would all meet and share information the following morning.

  Then Letty turned off her computer, locked her office, and headed back to the Lyle neighborhood. She parked in a place that could not be seen from the Lyle house. She knocked on the door of one of the Facebook friends of Barbara Lyle.

  An older woman wrapped in a sweater answered. She opened the front door but not the metal security screen. She had a combination of fear and suspicion on her face.

  “Hello, my name is Letty Valdez. I’m a private investigator seeking information about the recent death of Mrs. Barbara Lyle. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions.” Letty held up her private investigator’s license with her photo. Letty knew the woman’s name, Rita Benton, but did not want to have to explain how she knew this.

  “What do you want to know?” Mrs. Benton asked.

  “Did you see anyone in the street around the time Mrs. Lyle was killed?”

  “No, in fact, I wasn’t home at that time.”

  “Did you know Mrs. Lyle at all?”

  “Yes, I considered her a good friend.”

  “Did she happen to say anything to you that indicated someone was bothering her or that she was fearful of anyone?”

  Rita Benton fell silent. “I don’t know if I should talk about this.”

  “We’re trying to find a killer. We want justice for Mrs. Lyle.”

  “Then you should look at her husband,” Rita Benton spit out. “He’s a disreputable person. Barbara was afraid of him. He occasionally hit her. I tried to get her to seek help or report him, but she wouldn’t.”

  “I see,” said Letty. “Did she ever complain about any specific thing her husband did that upset her?”

  “A couple of weeks or so ago, she told me that she was sick with worry. She found out that her husband was involved in something. I don’t know what he was doing. Barbara just said it was unethical, but she didn’t say any more than that. She asked him to stop, and he ignored her. She didn’t know what to do.”

  “Was this the only time she talked about this?”

  “Yes. She had changed quite recently. She used to be a happy and self-confident person. But lately, she had become depressed and very worried about something. She never told me exactly what was going on over there.”

  “Anything else you can think of?”

  “No, but please don’t tell Fred Lyle that I told you this.”

  “I most definitely will not tell him. You can trust me.”

  “I have to go now.” She closed the door.

  Letty went back to her pickup truck and headed straight for the nearest pizza shop. Will and Clarice would just have to deal with the fact that the pizzas Letty chose for supper had spinach on them.

  ***

  Not far away, while Letty was researching Fred Lyle, Zhou and Jade were intensely involved in a search of Jade’s property.

  “They have been here twice,” Zhou said, “both Bao and Chong Ma. There is something they are looking for here. They must think it very important to come here after Carlos disappeared, and then return a year later. You have no idea what it could be?”

  “No, Zhou. Carlos was usually pretty open with me about everything. We didn’t keep secrets. Or I thought that until all this came up. Carlos never mentioned Chinese people, not even once.”

  “Let’s go in the opposite direction. We will start with your outdoor property, move to garage, then go indoors. Perhaps a new view will help us begin to see.”

  They worked together. They started in the front of the house, moved to the side, then into the back yard. They looked under pots, into tree branches and bushes, and looked for signs of disturbance in patio pavers, stones, and bare ground. They checked out the eaves and the roof. They even went into the alley. Nothing.

  Next they went into the garage and the space that was Jade’s pottery studio. Zhou had been through some of this space earlier, but this time, he went inch by inch. He knocked on walls to see if there were compartments behind them. He ran his fingers along the rafters. He looked behind and under and around and inside everything. He spent longer than usual going through the box of clothing and personal items that had belonged to Carlos. Jade watched but said very little.

  Next Zhou came to the area where she created pots. He lifted the wheel from its stand and took apart the splash pans to see if anything was hidden there. Nothing. He moved onto the cabinet that had Jade’s pottery supplies. As he had done earlier, he looked behind everything to make sure nothing was hidden there. Then he began picking up each individual item in the cabinets. As he went, he asked Jade to explain what the function of each item was.

  There were various kinds of tools in a wooden tool carrier that were used to cut and shape the clay. There were safety masks and gloves. There were plastic and wood circles that Jade called “bats.” She said they were used to safely move a wet clay pot. There were sponges, a sander, a scrubber, and thick wooden dowels she used as slab rollers. Zhou removed from the shelf the wooden carrier that held these tools and set it on the work table.

  Zhou looked confused. “I do not understand how pottery is created.”

  “Okay. You start with wet clay. I won’t go into detail about the different kinds of clay. That’s another whole thing in itself. You can either hand-build a pot or something else like a clay sculpture. Or you can throw the clay on the wheel to create a round object like a bowl or cup. Then you put everything in a kiln. I don’t have a kiln actually. I let my pots dry, then I take them to a potter’s cooperative. I’m a member, and I get to use their kiln. The kiln is like a really hot oven, and it bakes the clay. The first firing – that’s what you call it when you put it in the kiln and heat it up – you “fire” the pots. The first firing is called bisque firing, which is at a lower temperature. Then you glaze the pot with these glazes and fire them again and the glaze changes chemical composition and sort of melts onto the pot. We determine the temperature with “cones.” There are variations of all this, too. For example, you can pit fire pottery and the smoke makes interesting patterns on the pots.”

  “Complicated,” was his response.

  Under the tool carrier and pushed back into the shadows was a wooden box that Zhou had not noticed earlier. It was about eight inches wide, six inches deep, and four inches high. It was locked. He put it on the work table next to the tool carrier.

  “What about this wooden box?”

  “I don’t know, Zhou. I don’t remember that. We may have to break it open to see what is inside.”

  “What are these?” Zhou picked up a small plastic sack with a pink-tan colored powder inside.

  “That’s cobalt carbonate. You add it to the glaze and when it’s fired, the pot comes out this lovely blue color.” Jade pointed to other small plastic sacks with different colored powders. That one makes cop
per red although sometimes it can come out a blue-green in firing. That one is kind of a gray-white, and that one is for black. This one is brown, and that one is a red oxide color.”

  Jade smiled and said teasingly. “If you are interested, you should visit China sometime. The Chinese made gorgeous pottery, especially porcelain works in the Ming Dynasty. Have you heard of the Ming Dynasty? I could give you a book to read about the Ming Dynasty and its porcelain.”

  Zhou grinned. “So now you teach me about China? Such a good teacher you are. I do believe I know the Ming.”

  He held two of the small sacks full of powder, one in each hand. “Why is one slightly heavier than the other?”

  “It shouldn’t be heavier. They have the same amounts in each sack.”

  Zhou sat the two sacks down on Jade’s work bench and carefully opened one. He spread it flat so that the air was expelled, and the power extended to the edge of the opening but did not fall out. A metal key was clearly visible in the power. Jade handled him a pair of needle-nose pliers, and he removed it from the sack.

  “This is a key to what?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. Do you think Carlos hid it here?”

  “Yes, I do think this,” he responded. “You did not leave it there?”

  “No. And I know the key wasn’t in the sack at the store. I watched the clerk put the powder into each sack.”

  Zhou wiped the key clean and inserted it into the lock of the wooden box. The lock opened easily.

  “Wah!” Zhou said.

  Jade’s eyes were opened wide. “What’s inside?”

  “Papers. Two papers. Two pages, I mean. Let’s go inside and have a look.”

  They returned to the kitchen, sat at the table, and carefully opened the folded sheets of paper. Zhou pulled them apart and set them side by side.

  The first page had only numbers in two columns. The second page had a column with names on the left, then three columns with numbers.

  “What is this?” Jade asked.

  “I do not know, but I think this is very important. We must show Miss Letty. I think she will know.”