by Webb, Betty
Perhaps. But perhaps not. Someone with a grudge might simply have seized the day.
Ramos started to say something else, but just then a group of young men veered toward us. As they walked by, one of them—a buzz-cut bodybuilder—bumped him. Hard. Ramos, shock on his face, grabbed the edge of the picnic table to keep from being knocked to the ground. When he recovered his balance, he looked toward the young man, obviously expecting an apology.
Instead, Buzz Cut spit on the ground, too close to Ramos’ feet for comfort, and sauntered back to his friends. He said loudly, “Too much mud around here.”
With a laugh, the group turned on their heels and headed for the Wild West Saloon. As they walked away, I could see that the nape of each man’s neck bore a double lighting bolt tattoo. National Alliance thugs. Just one of the many hate groups that had slithered out of Arizona’s closet since the 9/11 attacks, soul brothers of the terrorists they claimed to despise.
For a moment I feared Ramos would charge after his assailant, but the Rev placed a warning hand on his arm. “Turn the other cheek,” he said quietly.
“For the millionth time?” But Ramos’ fists unclenched as his common sense overrode his Aztec warrior genes. He stared at the men’s retreating backs. “Rats always travel in packs, don’t they?”
Zhang’s answer was less zoological, even less restrained. His own fists remained clenched.
This was no time to indulge the National Alliance’s obvious desire for a dust-up, so I ripped a sheet of paper from my notebook and thrust it toward Ramos. “Do me a favor and show me where everyone was seated during the meal, plus all the entry and exit doors to the banquet hall. Write down the names of everyone at your table and the tables next to yours, anyone who had easy access to Gloriana’s place setting.” Although the salads had been waiting for the SOBOP people when they entered the banquet hall, there was a chance that the water hemlock had been added later.
Hands still shaking from suppressed rage, Ramos sketched a rough seating chart. Gloriana sat with her niece, Sandra, to her right. Next came Myra Gordon; Zhang; the Rev; Dr. Deborah Messinger, who had administered CPR; Randall Ott; and then, finishing up the table, Emil Ramos on Gloriana’s left. At the next table sat Representative Tinsley; Zachary and Megan Alden-Taylor; John Alden Brookings, a free-lance writer whose byline I’d sometimes seen in the Scottsdale Journal (a relative of Gloriana’s?); “Chaps” Peterson, the cowboy poet I’d heard earlier; and three men whose names I didn’t recognize.
“Publishers from California,” Ramos explained when I asked, his voice still tight. At least his hands had steadied. “They were attending the SOBOP Expo for the first time. I do not believe they knew Gloriana at all.”
I looked at the seating chart again, still not finding the name I expected to see. “Where did Owen sit?”
The Rev’s voice was almost as tight as Ramos’ when he answered. I guessed that the confrontation with the neo-Nazis bothered him more than he cared to admit. “That evening, as with the evening before, Gloriana made Owen sit outside in the corridor on one of those fold-up chairs.”
I took a moment to digest this information. “You mean he wasn’t even in the room?”
The Rev shook his head.
No dinner for Owen, then, other than a heaping portion of humiliation. And Owen was a proud man. The more I studied the diagram, the more worried I became. Gloriana’s table was located right next to the banquet hall’s exit, with a probably furious Owen seated within poisoning distance. Even a Marine can only take so much. How easy it would have been to take the water hemlock he already had in his pocket and….
When I asked about the table’s peculiar placement, Zhang gave me a sour smile. “You should have heard Gloriana carry on. Heck, I wasn’t that crazy about sitting near the exit, myself. Half the people in the room strolled past us at one time or another, going in and out. Grand Central station, Arizona style.” Then he flushed, probably remembering too late that Ramos’ wife had drawn up the chart. “Oh, Emil, I’m sorry. I didn’t.…”
Ramos, after giving one last look toward the neo-Nazis, interrupted him. “The table placement was my fault, not Beatrice’s. You see, I suffer from diabetes, and I have to get up and down a lot, so to make it easier for me, Beatrice sat me close to the corridor that led to the men’s room.”
A whole banquet hall full of suspects, then, walking to and fro past the victim’s table on the way to the john. Getting the hemlock onto Gloriana’s plate without being seen would have been relatively easy under any circumstances, whether before dinner or during. “Mr. Ramos, how many people attended the banquet?”
When he rubbed his forehead I noticed his hand was still shaking. “There were eight people at each table and there were fifteen tables. A few convention attendees may have missed the banquet, but I do not believe so. We publishers only meet once a year, and the time we spend together is quite valuable.”
One hundred and twenty suspects, then. In actuality, though, the situation wasn’t that bad. Merely a handful had opted for the hike and heard Owen’s description of the fatal properties of water hemlock. Then I recalled Randall Ott’s tirade upon his return to the resort. How many people who hated Gloriana or her publications heard him? I also remembered Zhang’s guidebook on Arizona flora and fauna, with its big color illustration of the plant. The caption had read:
Once limited to high mountain wetlands, water hemlock can now be found along the banks of streams lower than 3,000 feet in altitude. For the past few years, it has become profuse near Oak Creek Canyon. Its roots, stems, leaves and blossoms are extremely poisonous. Hikers beware.
“Mr. Zhang, that book of yours on Arizona plants. When was it published?”
In a tired voice, he answered, “Ah, yes, that damned book. It came out six months ago. What you’re after, I guess, is how many people at SOBOP could have seen it, and the answer is—just about everyone. It’s been on the SOBOP display table at the resort ever since the convention started.” He heaved a sigh. “I have it sitting on a little stand, much as I do here, open to the page on water hemlock. I thought the artist did a great job on the illustration, and I wanted to show it off.”
Even without Owen’s creekside lecture, anyone with murder on his mind could probably have identified the plant from the book alone.
Then Zhang’s face froze and I turned around, half-expecting to see the National Alliance thugs returning. But no, the man approaching us was merely Randall Ott, his nose raised so high in distaste at the brown skins around him that it was a wonder he didn’t trip over Clydesdale crap.
Following closely was Lynn Tinsley, also looking up at the sky. I figured she was on the lookout for black helicopters. Tinsley’s hairstyle echoed the Sixties, a blond bubble-do teased within an inch of its life, which made her tower over the minuscule Ott. Her pink shirtwaist dress sported enough ruffles to supply a Barbie Doll warehouse, while her dyed-to-match spike heels hinted at a bit of slut beneath the politico’s cotton candy exterior.
“I think it’s time for some lunch,” the Rev said to Ramos and Zhang. “You two up for some Navajo tacos?”
They nodded, eager to get away from Ott and Tinsley. As a further inducement—one which I am certain the Rev had planned —the Navajo taco stand was in the opposite direction the neo-Nazis had taken.
I forced a smile as Tinsley and Ott neared the picnic table. Just for Owen, I’d attempt to get on their good side. “Representative Tinsley, Mr. Ott. Would you like some fry bread? I’d be happy to run over to the stand and bring some back.” Truth be told, I was still hungry.
“I’m a vegetarian,” Ott said, settling himself across from me, Tinsley by his side. “Those damned Indians use animal fat in everything. From uninspected pigs, too, probably.” His voice was as thin as his hair.
Tinsley’s heavily made-up face maintained that odd rigidity peculiar to Botox users. “Maybe I should look into that.” Her gravelly voice hinted at decades of cigarettes and bourbon.
Ott sh
ook his head. “No point. Their reservation, their rules. You can’t change savages, anyway.”
The corners of my mouth began to hurt, so I dropped the forced smile. “Representative Tinsley, I know you’re a busy woman, so I’ll come straight to the point. I’d like to know what, if anything, you observed on the day Gloriana Alden-Taylor died.”
Ott cleared his throat. “Evening.”
Tinsley rolled her eyes, but her eyebrows remained stationary. “Oh, please.”
Ott’s nose actually twitched. “You know I believe in being precise, Lynn. Gloriana died around 7:15 p.m., which makes it evening.”
Why did so many anal retentives turn out to be racists? But love is blind, and I caught a hint of affection in Tinsley’s eyes as she gazed at him.
“Can we just go on and get this over with, Randall? Ms. Jones is right. I’m a busy woman and I don’t have time to sit around here splitting hairs with you.” Turning her attention to me, she said, “I didn’t see anything until poor Gloriana started making those terrible noises. I’d been busy talking to Chaps Peterson.” She motioned down the hill where the poet was still spinning his Wild West yarns. “Chaps shares many of my concerns about the federal government’s secret projects.”
I braced myself, expecting a harangue on black helicopters.
Fortunately, it didn’t happen. Tinsley raised her nose again, as if smelling something unpleasant. “But Chaps said he didn’t care about…to quote him exactly, ‘that kind of bullshit.’ He said he was attending SOBOP merely to find a publisher for his poetry, and he even had the gall to ask me if I’d introduce him to a few.”
“Did you?”
“Chaps being a member of my constituency, yes, I did.”
“And?”
Tinsley’s mouth stretched as far as the Botox would allow. I think it was supposed to be a smile. “I talked to Gloriana first, but she just laughed at me. Called his work ‘third-rate doggerel,’ even worse than the poetry of Robert Service, who—before she heard Chaps—she’d believed was the worst poet in American history.”
I wondered if Tinsley had conveyed Gloriana’s literary criticism to Chaps. Given the politico’s evident malice, the odds were that she had. “Was Gloriana the only publisher you approached for him?”
“Oh, I talked to David Zhang, what little good that did.”
Somehow I couldn’t see Arizona Trails printing odes to steers, but that was neither here nor there. “Ms. Tinsley, as a state lawmaker, surely you’re familiar with the laws that protect plants on government lands. Why did you disobey Owen’s orders on that hike? He told me you picked several plants.”
Her shrug made the pink ruffles flutter up and down her suspiciously prominent bosom. “I’m not a botanist. I thought I was simply picking flowers, certainly nothing protected.”
“Hell, as far as that goes, I picked a bunch of stuff, too,” Ott piped up. “Not that I was allowed to keep it. That bossy Indian made me hand everything over. So if you’re thinking that either Lynn or I sprinkled a little hemlock on Gloriana’s salad, you can think again. Neither of us had any problems with the woman. She was my publisher, and I owe my considerable success to her. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going over to the kettle corn booth to get a decent lunch cooked by decent White people.”
Judging from the look on Tinsley’s face, I thought she might be more interested in the nearby Bar-B-Que Bison booth run by a couple of Sioux. Still, she followed Ott closely enough, her spike heels sinking deeper and deeper into the grass with each step. By the time they reached the kettle corn, she’d sunk almost to his level.
Ain’t love grand?
Chapter 5
Even though Captain Kryzinski had asked the SOBOP attendees to remain in town for the next few days, I worried that some of them might defy his request and return home. I decided to drive up to Desert Shadows Resort and interview whomever I could find, starting with Myra Gordon, the librarian from Wyatt’s Landing. Besides, after the confrontation with the National Alliance and my interview with Tinsley and Ott, the drive would calm my nerves.
But first things first. I pulled my cell phone out of my carry-all and called the office. Jimmy picked up immediately.
“I’ve got some names for you, all people who were on the hike with Owen,” I told him. “Check them out.”
I could hear his keyboard click as he copied them down. “Lena, do you think any of these guys might have done it?”
“Hard to say,” I told him. “I’ve only interviewed a few people yet, but I’m on my way up to the resort now. I can tell you this, though. Zhang and Ramos both despised Gloriana. Tinsley and Ott are creepy enough to do just about anything.”
“That’s Representative Tinsley you’re talking about?” His voice sounded doubtful, as if he had trouble believing a politician would do anything naughty.
I made a mental memo to urge him to get his nose out of those Internet magazines of his and start reading the newspaper. Especially the political section. “Yeah, that Tinsley. There’s something about her that seems off, so I’d like you to dig around in her past, see if there are any gaps in her resumé.” Whatever was going on with Tinsley, Jimmy would uncover it. No one could hack into sealed records and forbidden databases like my partner.
I’d just hung up and was heading toward the exit, when yet another despicable person crossed my path.
“Look, Lena, you can’t ignore me.” Was it my imagination, or were Dusty’s eyes redder than earlier?
“Sorry, cowboy. I’ve got places to go, people to see.”
He planted himself in front of me, digging the heels of his roping boots deep into the soil. The immovable object. I tried to go around him, but the crowd was so thick that I, the irresistible force, felt effectively cornered.
“You might as well talk to me. I won’t leave you alone until you do.”
I thought for a tantalizing moment of the .38 nestled snugly in my carry-all. If I popped him one, surely any reasonable judge would consider the deed justifiable homicide. Any reasonable female judge, that is. With my luck, the case would probably draw some crusty old buzzard who believed in equal killin’ rights for everyone but females.
“Okay, Dusty. We’ll talk. There’s no point to it, though. You not only screwed around on me, but if my information is correct, you actually married the woman! You know me well enough to know that I don’t fool around with married men, so it’s over. I need someone with a little less baggage. If you think I’m carrying a torch for you, you are sadly mistaken.”
I am so full of crap.
My eyes must have given me away, because he reached out and grasped my hand gently. “Honey, I’m sorry.”
“You are one sorry son of a bitch, that’s for sure,” I muttered, as he led me into the shade of an acacia tree. It was all I could do to keep from bawling.
Dusty hadn’t been my only man—I went through a brief period of promiscuity during my teens—but he’d been the only one I ever loved. But so what? If you can fall into love, surely you can fall out of it. And then maybe, if the gods are with you, fall into it again with someone more appropriate.
“She meant nothing to me, Lena.”
It hurt too much to laugh. “Right. That’s why you married her.”
“The marriage wasn’t legal.” He rubbed his eyes as if they hurt. “It was just one of those Vegas things. Like Britney Spears and what’s-his-name.”
“With Elvis administering the vows? Last time I checked, cowboy, even Vegas marriages were legal.”
“We didn’t apply for a marriage license. And the guy wasn’t really a minister, just an Elvis impersonator we met at one of the casinos.”
“So why bother with Elvis? Why not just have your dirty little weekend, or whatever it was, and leave it at that?”
“Aw, Lena. I was drunk, that’s why. I’d been drunk for a week, and you know what that can do to a person.”
As a matter of fact, I didn’t know. I don’t drink. Never did. Not knowing my paren
tage, I feared my DNA might be loaded with any number of addictive genes, so I had long ago bypassed possible problems by drinking nothing stronger than Tab. In my personal habits, at least, I was as squeaky clean as a Temple-qualified Mormon.
“Dusty, what the hell were you doing drinking for an entire week?”
His bloodshot eyes met mine. “Lena, in some ways you are so naive. Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m a recovering alcoholic?”
The Overland Stage came rumbling by again, making enough noise to render further speech pointless, but it gave me time to think. I cast my memory back over the four years I’d known Dusty. Since we lived at opposite ends of the county and had wildly conflicting schedules, we seldom got together as often as we would have liked. When we did, our dates usually consisted of Mexican dinners and action movies at the local cineplex. Then we would return to my apartment upstairs from Desert Investigations for a little love-making, and in between bouts, sip on Tabs. I had never seen Dusty drunk.
I did remember one particularly stressful night when he showed up at my place with a shopping bag full of Pete’s Wicked Ale. I hadn’t thought too much of it at the time, not even when—after the night was over—he took the remainders back to the ranch with him.
In light of his confession, everything came together. Our off-again, on-again relationship. His frequent disappearances, his mysterious returns. Maybe the average woman would have challenged this behavior, but I’m not the average woman. I was used to strange behavior from men, and so I had accepted our oddly distant, if passionate, relationship. Oh, well, live and learn.
Once the Overland Stage rumbled away, I snapped, “You sure as hell don’t look all that recovering to me, cowboy. Or did you pick up those red eyes on a trail ride? Surely you don’t believe I’m stupid enough to excuse your behavior with that redhead just because you were drunk!”