Desert Shadows (9781615952250)

by Webb, Betty

  I took two wrong turns before I found myself pulling up to the big iron gate. I honked the horn, and a pack of dogs, cats, and Emma-the-not-Vietnamese-pot-belly trotted through a jumble of cars, vans, and pickup trucks to confront me.

  Megan, looking like she was ready to pop, waddled forward to open the gate, little Casey at her heels. I wondered if the people down by the golf course could hear the racket.

  “Back!” Megan yelled, shooing Casey and the other animals away. “Everybody get back!” She hauled the gate open by hand, calling for me to move the car through quickly, before any of her animals escaped.

  “Half of them might run off to find their former owners, the very shits who abused them,” she grumbled, as she helped me and my crutches out of the car. Since I’d last seen her, her eyes had become shockingly dark, as if she hadn’t been sleeping. I also noticed that the front of her maternity jeans was wet. Had her water broken? Was she going to ignore this signal of imminent birth, simply squat down somewhere and have her baby, with Rosa doing midwife honors?

  As I braced the crutches in the loose gravel, she gave me a pitying look. I feared for a moment that she might pat my haunch and ruffle my ears, but she simply asked, “Is there anything I can do for you, Lena? Anything at all?”

  “I’m fine, Megan.” I wished people would stop asking, because I was getting tired of my answer.

  I had made my way halfway to the house when Casey, who had obviously found something interesting on the bottom of one of my shoes, knocked a crutch away. Off-balance, I fell to the gravel. I landed on my butt, but my carry-all fell upside down, spilling its contents.

  Megan bent to help me, then jumped back, her face white. “My god, that’s a gun.”

  “Of course it is, Megan,” I said, attempting to put everything back in pretty much the same order it had been without adding any gravel to the mix. “I’m licensed to carry.”

  “I don’t like guns. They’re dangerous.” The gun now safely out of sight, she pulled me to my feet, then handed my crutches back to me.

  “Guns being dangerous, I believe, is the whole point.” At least my handcuffs hadn’t fallen out. Then she would have really freaked.

  Her beautiful face turned grim. “No, you don’t understand. My rescue organization gets too many gun-shot dogs and cats. It’s a slaughter out there, and not just during hunting season. Some people actually pick up strays to use for target practice.”

  I’d heard rumors to that effect. It was fortunate that the evil in the world was balanced by the goodness of people like Megan. I hoped she would continue to care so much about her animals when the baby arrived. I would hate to see Casey, Black Bart, Emma, and the rest of the four-footed crew packed off to the pound.

  After helping me brush the gravel off my clothes, she escorted me to the house. “I’m surprised you moved up here so quickly,” I told her. “Aren’t you supposed to clear probate first?”

  “Technically, yes, but Gloriana’s executor said that since the office had been destroyed, we could continue Patriot’s Blood business up here. Since we were moving the business, he said we might as well move ourselves, too. I really like it, because everyone in Save Our Friends can meet here at the same time. No more A to M on Saturdays, N to Z on Sundays.”

  She opened the big double doors for me, allowed me to hop through quickly, then closed it, almost hitting Emma on the rump as she did so. The pig, which was almost the size of a Shetland pony, trotted ahead of us, her cloven feet tap-tap-tapping across the saltillo tiles, leaving little wet “V”s in her wake.

  I head a noise from the direction of the living room, and looked back to see Rosa running toward us, a mewling kitten in each hand. “Miss Megan, I told you so many times, you should let me do those things.” Animal hair covered Rosa’s black dress, her eyes were wild. “You take care of the pets, I take care of the house.”

  Megan shrugged. “I was already outside with Emma.”

  “The pig.” Rosa sounded like she thought Emma belonged on a bun.

  “It’s the day for her bath.”

  “Dios mio,” Rosa muttered. “Which bathroom you use?”

  Megan looked at her like Rosa had gone off her head. “Don’t be silly, Rosa. I’m not using a bathroom. I’m using the fountain.”

  With that, she set off after the pig, leaving me with Rosa and two squalling kittens.

  “You need a maid, Miss Jones?” she said, displaying the first sign of humor I’d seen in her. “Have feather duster, will travel.”

  I returned her smile. “Sorry, Rosa, it’d take you all of five minutes to clean my apartment. I’m here to see Mr. Zach. He around?”

  “Sure. They are all in the library, working.”

  “All?”

  She shrugged, making one of the kittens complain even more loudly. “Shush, you,” she murmured, caressing it with her wrinkled cheek. “If you not good, I not take you to play with Caroline and John-John.” Then, to me, “Oh, yes, everybody here, the whole office. They in there figuring out what to do, but you can go in. I take these cats to the children. Miss Caroline, she like to feed the littlest babies.”

  With that, she walked off, leaving me to make my way unannounced into the new Patriot’s Blood offices.

  The library had been transformed from a museum for books to an office that produced them. While the valued first editions remained secured in their glass-fronted cabinets, every other square inch of space had been usurped. Dozens of people sat around chatting on the leather sofas and chairs, on table tops, even the floor. Some clutched manuscripts, others held floppy discs. A large easel stood against one wall. On it, a chart illustrated which level in the publishing process each manuscript or game had attained. I counted eighteen projects frozen in various places between ACCEPTANCE LETTER and SHIPPING. A few books, not yet arrived at BINDING, had thick red lines slashed through their titles. To my delight, Barry Fetzner’s A Man Stands Alone was among them. My joy was lessened only by knowing that the book’s cancellation would please Fetzner, too. All the video games and CDs had been canceled. No more Border Run and its hateful cousins. What would the National Alliance do for fun now?

  A silence fell across the room when I crutched in. “Is that her?” someone asked.

  “Yes, Ms. Jones is the detective who saved Sandra,” Zach said, smiling toward me. “Everyone take a break. She probably needs to ask me some questions.”

  The questions had to wait until I suffered through a series of handshakes and hugs. Eventually, Zach led me out of the library and into a neighboring den where I perched myself on the edge of a high-backed sofa, taking care not to sit too far back. It was strange how even the smallest habits must change when you are on crutches.

  “Miss Jones, we’re holding a pretty important meeting here, so please make it short.” Zach watched me position my crutches against the end of the sofa. His dark hair was combed neatly and he even wore a good suit, although a few stray bits of fur clung to it. The expression on his face, though, was that of a busy man tolerating an interruption.

  This new Zach made me curious. “Now that you’re living in the Hacienda, what are you going to do with the other house?”

  “I turned it over to a real estate broker this morning,” he said, his foot tapping impatiently. “As I’m sure you know, this place is falling down, and it’ll take a fortune to make it truly liveable. I could sell that acreage up north and put some of the proceeds into the house like Megan wants to do, but the question is—is the Hacienda really worth it? Wouldn’t my money be better spent on, say, a less spectacular place but one in better shape? Megan also forgets that I need to find new offices for Patriot’s Blood. We can’t keep operating out of here.”

  “Megan mentioned something about building an animal shelter,” I said, made curious by Zach’s choice of words: I, my, mine. Not we, ours. Where did Megan’s dreams fit in with his plans?

  Zach’s mouth twisted. “Look, Megan’s hobby is fine in its place, but she needs to get it under contr
ol. I’m not going to live the rest of my life with all these animals under foot. She needs to get rid of them.”

  I didn’t like what I heard. “Have you discussed this with Megan?”

  “Of course I did. Needless to say, it didn’t go well. But that’s her problem. I’m running things, now.”

  His callousness made me wince, but after all, I wasn’t here to talk about the fate of homeless animals. “Zach, how did the authors take it when you called, the ones whose contracts you dropped?”

  “With varying degrees of outrage. At the high end, some were philosophical. At the low end, I got a few death threats. The game designers were the worst, probably because they tend to have trouble discerning fantasy violence from the real thing. But a couple of authors were pretty vituperative, too.”

  “Such as?”

  “Randall Ott, for one. How my grandmother was able to deal with that hothead is beyond me.”

  “I thought Ott’s book was your biggest money-maker. You’re just going to let it go?”

  He sniffed. “It certainly was, accent on was. Since Patriot’s Blood will not be associated with his type of material any more, I suggested that he take his sequel to another publisher. Perhaps that National Alliance publishing house in West Virginia. He refused, saying their distribution is too narrow, which is probably true. They’ve never been able to crack the New York Times best-seller list like we have.”

  He looked at his watch. “Ott’s due up here any minute to sign some papers. We’re reverting his rights back to him. So if you don’t mind.…”

  I can take a hint, but I don’t have to abide by it. “Zach, since you’ve scratched Gloriana’s entire publishing philosophy, what are you going to put in its place?” Cowboy poetry? Odes to pintos?

  “Real literature,” he said, pride neutralizing the impatience on his face. “I’m going to start out with a strong non-fiction line, then as novels arrive, I’ll look at those. Right now, I’m drawing up contracts for some very exciting titles. Essentialism and Modernism. The Violence of Rhetoric. And my own personal favorite, Pedagogy, Gender and Equity Examined through Poststructural Dialectics. It’s a brave new day for Patriot’s Blood.”

  At first I thought he was joking, but the fervor—Fever—in his eyes proved him serious. “And you think you can make money with books like that?”

  His earlier impatience reemerged. “I’m aware that any new venture takes time. Readers have been so inundated with chick lit and other pap passing for literature that they need to relearn how to read. That’s why I’ll debut my non-fiction line first, as a teaching tool. Then, after I’ve reeducated the public, I’ll roll out my experimental fiction line. Given the proper groundwork, all I have to do is print quality and the book-buying public will be lining up at the bookstores.”

  If I print it, they will read.

  I remembered Megan’s hopes about the new direction Patriot’s Blood might take. “I thought there was talk about publishing some mysteries.”

  Zach’s nose twitched as if he smelled something bad. “That was Megan’s idea, not mine. I’m trying to legitimize Patriot’s Blood, and I don’t see how that can be accomplished by moving from one type of trash to another.”

  ***

  On the way out, I passed a furious-looking Randall Ott walking up the gravel drive. Megan was too busy washing Emma in the fountain to say hello to him, but I gave him a wave for old time’s sake. He didn’t wave back.

  Chapter 25

  As soon as I left the property, I pulled to the side of the road, took my cell phone out of my carry-all, and punched in Myra Gordon’s number. The librarian still wasn’t picking up. Enough being enough, I flipped open my Arizona map and looked for Wyatt’s Landing. I found it a few miles off I-10, almost halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. An hour’s drive, if the traffic gods were with me.

  They were. Snowbirds were nowhere in sight, and the only vehicles left on the road were eighteen-wheelers and SUVs hauling ass to get to wherever. For safety’s sake, I positioned the tiny Neon halfway between two semis, and watched the landscape fly by. This area of the state resembled the pictures taken by the Mars Rover, without the pretty pink coloring. Miles and miles of flat beige desert and gray rocks, relieved every now and then by the bright red of fresh roadkill.

  With relief, I swung off the freeway at the Wyatt’s Landing exit and entered the outskirts of the tiny farming community, with alfalfa fields on my left, a few cheap motels on my right. The town itself was so small you could spit across it, little more than a collection of gas stations, fast food outlets, and elderly stucco homes.

  The Wyatt’s Landing Public Library—due to the town’s infinitesimal size, there was only one branch—nestled between a Taco Bell and a Burger King. At first I suspected that the cars in its parking lot represented overflow from the fast food joints, but when I walked through the library’s glass doors, I discovered I was wrong. Men wearing bib overalls trundled back and forth from the SCIENCE to AGRICULTURE stacks, while over in the corner, a group of women huddled together, avid looks on their faces. They all had copies of the same book on their laps: The Life of Pi. Then I remembered it was OneBookAZ month, the time every year when we were supposed to all be reading the same damn book.

  I walked up to the information desk and asked for Myra Gordon.

  “This is her day off,” a middle-aged woman wearing Harlequin-style reading glasses studded with rhinestones told me. Her hair was the color of merlot, the same color as her glasses. She was so Retro she was chic.

  “Think she’s at home?”

  She pushed the reading glasses up and parked them on her head. “I wouldn’t know. Are you a friend?”

  “Oh, yes,” I lied.

  As I left, I saw her reflection in the glass doors. She was already punching a number into the phone.

  ***

  Myra Gordon lived a mere two blocks away, in an old stucco house that was probably an original Territorial. When I pulled behind her blue Honda, she was rushing out the door. Her face fell when she saw me.

  “Mrs. Mbisi, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were avoiding me,” I said.

  She stared at me for a moment, her eyes snapping with fury. Then she forced herself to calm and put her car keys back into her poodle purse. “I see there’s no getting rid of you, so you might as well come in.”

  Nothing like a warm welcome to make a detective feel at home. But I swung my crutches out of the Neon and hobbled to the porch.

  Her eyes softened. “Oh. I’m sorry. I forgot about the bomb. And what you did to help that poor woman.” She unlocked the door, ushered me in, and asked me if I’d like something to drink.

  Not knowing how long my visit would be, I accepted a Diet Coke. Even in March, Arizona air is desert dry. While she was in the kitchen clanking around with ice trays, I studied the African print throws on the sofa, the African masks above it. The coffee table and each end table held African carvings, some of animals, some of women. The only non-African decorations in the room were two studio photographs: one of a handsome, dark-skinned man with short-cropped gray hair, and the other of a lighter-skinned young man in an Army uniform.

  When Gordon/Mbisi returned with my Diet Coke, she noticed me checking out the room. “My husband was from Ghana,” she explained. “He brought most of the art with him. I added a few pieces later.”

  “Is that your son?” I asked, gesturing to the younger man’s picture.

  When she nodded, the anger returned to her eyes. “He was killed in Baghdad on the day of the first assault.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  This time the anger didn’t leave. “And my husband was murdered, which makes two loved ones dead because of White men. But you know that, don’t you? That’s why you’re here.”

  Sometimes detective work is dirty work; I had little choice. Owen was looking at the needle if I didn’t clear him. “That’s right, Mrs. Gordon. Or do you prefer Mrs. Mbisi now that your secret’s out?”

  “G
ordon. When I testified at the trial, my husband’s murderers told me their friends in the Aryan Brotherhood would ‘take care of me,’ so I’m doing what I can to make that difficult. That’s why I took my maiden name back and moved here.”

  No wonder she had been so hard to contact. I hoped for her sake that the Aryan Brotherhood wasn’t as Internet-savvy as my partner. Then I comforted myself with the realization that they probably weren’t. I doubted if their collective I.Q. would add up to room temperature.

  “Mrs. Gordon, my partner ran a search on you and found out everything about the trial, including the interesting fact that the men who murdered your husband had some Patriot’s Blood books in their apartment. Also, the woman who drew up the seating chart for the SOBOP banquet told me that you’d asked to be placed at Gloriana’s table. Did you want to make sure you could watch her die?”

  Gordon didn’t bat an eye. “I wanted to look into the face of the woman who had murdered my husband.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. “Mrs. Gordon.…”

  She waved my words away. “I know, I know. You’re going to tell me that she didn’t murder him, that all she did was publish books. I’m no fool, Ms. Jones. I don’t necessarily believe my husband would still be alive if Gloriana Alden-Taylor had printed only harmless children’s stories or Regency romances. But everyone who contributes to hate, whether by speech or by printed word, is morally culpable for the pain their words cause others.”

  “Not legally, though.” I hated myself for even pointing this out.

  She inclined her head. “No, but think of this. If her products were illegal, Gloriana would be alive in prison, not dead in the ground.”

  There was a picture, Gloriana Alden-Taylor sharing a cell with the female version of God’s Avenger. Too bad it would remain only a fantasy. “Did you kill Gloriana, Mrs. Gordon?”

  By now the anger had burnt away from her eyes and only sorrow remained. “No, Ms. Jones, I did not kill her. I have too much intimate acquaintance with violence ever to contribute to it myself. And with all the First Amendment’s faults, I’m still a believer. If we relinquish free speech, we diminish our souls.”