by Webb, Betty
Another sniff. Then her face scrunched into an even bigger frown. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you that woman who pulled poor Sandra Alden-Taylor out of that fire?”
Hot diggedy dog. “Yes, ma’am, I am.” I shifted my weight from foot to foot and grimaced, as if they both hurt. Which they did.
“How brave of you!”
Looking good. I ducked my head and tried to look modest. “It was nothing. The doctor says I might be able to walk without crutches some day.” Next week, actually.
She spun around and tapped a few keystrokes into her computer. “Mrs. Alden-Taylor made an appointment to see Mr. Johns nine days ago.”
Gotcha, Zach. “Thank you, Mrs. Maxwell. Thank you so much.”
I clunked around and headed for the door, only to stop when she added, “But the day before Mrs. Alden-Taylor died, she called back and canceled.”
“Canceled?”
Mrs. Maxwell nodded. “She sounded strange.” Then she lowered her voice. “If I hadn’t known her better, I’d swear she was crying.”
Chapter 28
The rain stopped as soon as I reached the Neon, yet I drove up the road to the Hacienda slowly, dreading the misery I would soon cause there. But a murderer was a murderer, regardless of how pleasant he might be. Not that Zach had been all that pleasant during my last visit. Even though he was apparently no Alden-Taylor, he had begun to exhibit signs of that family’s obsessiveness. Maybe there was something to be said for nurture versus nature, after all.
The more I learned about the Alden-Taylors the more they baffled me. For all their passions—their Fevers—they were essentially a cold family. Even Zach. Although married to a warm woman who needed him, he cared only for his vision of a new Patriot’s Blood Press. The twins had their dysfunctional relationship; Sappho, her cameras; Sandra, her gambling and promiscuity.
And Gloriana?
Gloriana remained an enigma to me. Her lust for Owen appeared to be simply that—mere lust, with no real affection or human concern. She just wanted what she wanted when she wanted it. The only thing she seemed truly to care for—besides her raging hormones and bloodline—was the Hacienda. Even Patriot’s Blood Press existed merely to service that crumbling house. And as long as the money rolled in for repairs, why should she care how much misery her books and games caused the world?
A house.
Dead ancestors.
Bound pages.
Surely there had to be something more to the woman.
Why had Gloriana canceled her appointment at the attorney’s office? What had made such a glacial woman cry?
There was something missing.
***
This time when I arrived at the Hacienda, there were no animals in the stable yard, and only two battered pickup trucks. Where was everyone? Curious, I tapped the Neon’s horn twice, and after a minute, the gate opened. When Rosa met me at the door, Casey at her heels, the meows and barks behind her proved that Megan’s menagerie was still in residence. At least Zach hadn’t packed them off to the pound. Yet.
“Hey, Rosa. Any other humans around?”
She gave me a pained smile as a kitten tried to climb up her stockinged leg. It looked like one of the pair she had been bottle-feeding the other day. “The children are here, and Miss Megan, but Mr. Zach is away.”
I did not know whether to be disappointed or relieved. I still needed to ask him a few questions before I took my theory to Captain Kryzinski. For instance, why had Zach burned down Patriot’s Blood? With Gloriana already dead and the company willed to him, what would be the point? I wouldn’t ask him directly, of course; I’d make a few vague inquiries about insurance and see what happened.
As Rosa bent down—to swat the kitten away, I thought—I asked, “Could I see Miss Megan, then?”
Rosa didn’t swat the kitten. She picked it up, a fond look on her face. Maybe this rescue business was catching.
“Miss Megan out in the back, fixing someone.” Still holding the kitten, Rosa led me through a furry tide until we reached the large French doors that opened onto the property’s rear acreage. I could see that one of the outbuildings had recently been painted white. Milling around outside the building were Emma and the rest of Megan’s herd, which now included a limping llama.
When I gestured questioningly toward the building, Rosa said, “Her new animal hospital. She pick up a couple of dogs yesterday, some cats. And Juan.”
“Juan?”
“That thing.” She pointed to the llama. “She say the owner beat him.”
Suddenly I did not feel so triumphant. What would happen to the animals when Kryzinski arrested Zach? To Megan and the baby? But Owen had a family, too. What would happen to them if I did not prove him innocent? Leaving Rosa behind with her kitten, I hobbled across the rugged ground to the outbuilding.
“Hi, Lena,” Megan said, as I walked through the door. “Give me a moment here.” She looked terrible. Since I had last seen her, the skin around her eyes had purpled, and her cheeks looked sunken.
Next to her, an elderly woman bent over a table, studying a thin black dog which had only three legs.
A wave of nausea hit me. Clutching my stomach, I stepped outside again. After gulping air for a few seconds, I managed to close my mind to everything but the investigation. Then I went back inside.
“We’ll never find a home for this guy,” Megan was saying.
“Want me to put him down?” The woman’s voice held the brisk, vaguely compassionate tone common to the medical profession. Probably a vet.
Megan sighed and the dog’s tail thumped against her in answer. “Dr. Weitz, I don’t need any more animals.”
“Then I’ll prepare a syringe.”
Megan, obviously undergoing a change of heart, stayed her with a hand. “No. Other than the leg, he appears to be healthy. All he needs are a few meals and a bath. I’ll keep him.”
“You sure?”
Megan sighed again. “Yeah, I’m sure. Oh, lord, Zach’s going to kill me.”
I winced at her turn of phrase, even though I doubted if Megan was in danger from her husband. He would gain nothing from killing his wife and baby.
Or would he?
Dr. Weitz gave Megan a wintry smile. “Want me to fit Stumpy here with a prosthesis, then?”
For a moment Megan appeared to take the question at face value and even seemed to be considering it. “How much…?”
“It was a joke, dear, a joke.” Dr. Weitz patted her on the back, then reached down to the table and did the same for the dog. “Plenty of three-legged dogs around.”
The vet lifted the dog off the examining table and put him down carefully on the ground, where he sat and gazed at Megan with adoration. Ignoring him, Dr. Weitz threw a few items into a big leather bag and snapped it shut.
“How much do I owe you?” Megan asked.
“I’ll send you a bill.” With a wave, Dr. Weitz shouldered her bag and left.
Megan finished tidying up the room, which was—truth be told—now neater than the Hacienda. “She never does, you know.”
“Never does what?”
“Send a bill. Dr. Weitz has worked pro bono ever since I started all this. She’s more or less retired, but still…I think I’m her only non-paying customer.”
As we left the building, Stumpy hopped along with us, never once taking his eyes off Megan. The sky had cleared and the sun beamed through. The scent of damp earth and sage drifted toward us from Mummy Mountain. “Another foundling?”
“What? Oh, the dog. One of our volunteers picked him up in the desert. He’d been dumped.”
I wondered what kind of person would dump an animal in Arizona’s desert and leave it to fend for itself. In our harsh landscape, mountain lions and even coyotes could die of hunger. Domesticated dogs had no chance at all. Especially three-legged dogs.
My stomach heaved again and I gulped more air. When we entered the Hacienda with Stumpy at our heels, the other animals ran to greet us, Casey in front. A littl
e Yorkie I hadn’t noticed before knocked into my crutch and almost sent me sprawling.
“Bad Peppy,” Megan said. “Sit. Sit.”
Bad Peppy sat. So did Stumpy, Casey and several other members of the fur herd. Someone had once loved them enough to train them.
“Megan, how many dogs do you have now?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “Twelve. And fourteen cats. Three rabbits. A pig. A llama. But like I told Zach, it’s not as bad as it sounds. We’ve already found homes for six of the dogs and a few of the cats. I might be stuck with Emma, though.”
“How about the llama?”
“Juan? Already promised to a farm near Buckeye. So you see? I’m not totally irresponsible.”
Her quick use of the word intrigued me. Someone had obviously called her that, and recently. Zach, probably. Whatever he thought of his wife, though, didn’t make any difference now. When I’d done what I needed to do, putting up with Megan’s animals would be the least of his problems.
“Listen, Megan, I came up here to talk to Zach, but since he’s not here, maybe I could ask you a few questions.”
“Of course. Let’s go…oh!” A strange look crossed her face. “He’s moving!”
“Moving?”
She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her stomach. To my astonishment, I could feel a large lump sliding horizontally across her large belly. Every now and then it slowed, poked outward briefly, then continued on its path.
“That’s his foot,” she said, her face rapturous, her hand still on mine.
Zach’s baby. Oh, Jesus, what was I going to do? Half sick with guilt, I pulled my hand away. “Wonderful, Megan. You must be excited.”
Her glow came back, almost erasing the shadows underneath her eyes. “I’m living a miracle.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I just smiled my Judas smile.
When the baby finally stopped playing kickball or whatever it was doing, she led me into the den, where I settled with relief onto a catless chair. There was something to be said for big houses and lots of furniture; they provided room for everyone, even humans. Megan sat across from me, Stumpy at her feet. With his broad, squared-off snout and three gangly legs, he looked like an unholy cross between a St. Bernard and a Great Dane. I had to agree with her earlier statement. She would never find a home for the ugly thing.
“You sure made a friend there,” I said, pointing out the obvious.
She nodded. “He took to me so fast he must have belonged to a woman.”
I couldn’t imagine a woman dumping a three-legged dog to die in the desert. Maybe something had happened to her. Maybe her body was still out there, waiting to be found.
As if reading my mind, Megan said, “The off-roaders who found him looked all over the place for his owner, but they couldn’t find anyone. They said they didn’t see any buzzards.”
I shuddered. Arizona’s Sonoran desert had long been the repository for the bodies of lost hikers, not to mention a favorite dumping ground for murder victims. And dogs who had outgrown their welcome.
No time to worry about that now, though. “Megan, when will your husband be back?”
She gave me a wry smile. “Tomorrow. He flew to Iowa to talk to a couple of students attending the writers’ workshop. Their instructor thinks they’ve written publishable manuscripts.”
“Literary stuff, right?”
The shadows underneath her eyes returned, and she shrugged. “Yes. But there’s always the chance that he’ll get lucky and one of the students will turn out to be the new Michael Cunningham. You know, the man who wrote The Hours, won the Pulitzer Prize, and made all that money on the movie.”
I’d seen the movie, but hadn’t finished the book. “That would be nice.”
She winced. “Nice. And maybe someday Stumpy will grow his leg back.” It was the first time I’d ever heard an edge in her voice, but it disappeared almost as soon as it emerged. She gave a little laugh, then leaned over with great difficulty and petted Stumpy on the head. He rewarded her with a gaze of unconditional love.
Whoever had dumped that dog was a fool.
Before Megan could say anything else, Sandra’s two children came running into the room. “Aunt Megan, can we go see Mommy at the hospital tonight?” John-John asked.
Megan shook her head. “I’m sorry, but with everything that’s going on, I can’t manage it. Uncle Zach will be back tomorrow, we’ll go then. For now, why don’t you take our new dog and give him a bath?”
The disappointment on the children’s faces vanished. “Can we wash him in the fountain?” Caroline.
“Sure.” Megan nudged the big dog toward the children, and after an initial hesitation, he hobbled after them.
Megan sat back and sighed. “The doctors say Sandra might be able to come home next week. With all these animals and her kids.…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but added, “Thank God for Rosa.”
Megan looked like she was about to collapse from stress. I wondered if she was worried about the possible loss of her dreamed-of animal shelter, or if she was beginning to suspect that her husband had killed Gloriana.
In an odd way, I found myself more disgusted with Zach for abandoning Megan in her frail condition than for murdering his grandmother. How could some miserable manuscript mean more to a man than his pregnant wife? But that was the Alden-Taylors for you. Once an obsession took hold….
I reminded myself that Zach was no Alden-Taylor, merely a cuckoo in the nest. Still, he had been raised by Gloriana, and apparently her predisposition to Fevers had infected him, too. One had driven him to murder.
“Megan, have you tried, I mean really tried to talk to him about Patriot’s Blood and the new editorial direction?”
She nodded glumly. “Oh, yes. We’ve had several long talks, well, arguments really. He won’t budge. He keeps saying that he left his job at ASU believing that he’d be developing an experimental literature imprint, and now that Gloriana’s dead, he can finally do what he set out to do. He wouldn’t listen to my suggestion that it might be a good idea to have at least one Patriot’s Blood imprint operating in the black, that the income generated from mysteries or thrillers could help support his, uh, more experimental stuff.”
She sounded every bit as enthralled with his dreams as Zach did with hers. The difference was, he had the wherewithal to fulfill his. All she had were pleas. Once again I congratulated myself on staying single. “What exactly did Zach say?”
The shadows around her eyes grew darker. “He made fun of everything I suggested. He even said that it was time I grew up.” Then those beautiful eyes welled up. “Oh, Lena, I don’t know what’s happened to him!”
Money’s what happened to him, Megan. But I didn’t say it.
She sighed. “Zach used to be such a reasonable man. All you ever had to do was present a good case for something, and he’d listen. Like Save Our Friends. When I first came up with the idea of starting a rescue organization, I told him what I thought it would entail, jotted down a cost estimate, and he said to go ahead, that somehow we’d find the money. Now you can’t tell him anything. He’s…he’s driven.”
The perfect opening. Now was the time to see if Zach had told Megan about the results of the DNA test. “It’s interesting that you say that, Megan. I’ve interviewed all the Alden-Taylors, and I’ve never seen such a driven group of people in my life. The twins, well, hopefully that problem gets taken care of soon. As for Sappho, she’s so obsessed with her films she walked away from a fortune. Frankly, I’m surprised you expected Zach to be any different.”
Megan flicked a sharp glance at me, then quickly looked away. But not before I saw the knowledge in her face. As if to cover her lapse, she rubbed her still-damp eyes against the back of her wrist. “Not everyone in a family is alike, Lena. I’m not much like either of my parents. How about you? Are you like yours?”
Now there was a question. “Megan, I don’t have the faintest idea if I’m like my parents or not.” Then
I told her about my life, the shooting, the foster homes. I didn’t tell her everything, though. There would be no point.
During the telling, her eyes grew so dark they looked bruised. Then, to my great discomfort, she struggled out of her chair, stepped over to me, and gave me such a tight hug that I could feel the baby moving again. “Oh, God, Lena, I’m so sorry.”
I peeled her away from me as gently as I could. What kind of person could ever hurt this compassionate woman?
The detective kind, that’s who.
Chapter 29
For the perfect end to the perfect day, I needed to make yet another trip to Dr. Gomez. Due to my injuries from the explosion, I had missed my last appointment and I didn’t dare miss this one. Appearing uncooperative—well, at least more uncooperative than ususal—could get my license pulled.
No license, no Desert Investigations.
Gomez had the grace to look concerned as I limped through the door. “I read about the explosion,” she said, watching me fuss with my crutches. “Your actions were extraordinary.”
Her praise made me uncomfortable. “Well, I couldn’t exactly let the woman burn to death, could I?” All I need is another nightmare to add to my collection. Balancing the crutches against the sofa, I lowered my backside, only to find the cushion lumpier than usual.
Or maybe my ass was scrawnier than usual.
Gomez tapped her pencil on her desk, a sign she was impatient with her patient. “Many people would have let the woman die, Lena. You were already injured, yourself.”
“So?” I didn’t understand what she was getting at. Although I was no longer on the force, I had been trained as a police officer. Serve and protect. That’s what cops did.
But when I reminded her of this, the pencil-tapping intensified. “Lena, you haven’t been a police officer in two years. Why is it still so important for you to save other people, even at the risk of your own life?”
I frowned. “It’s instinct, that’s all.”
She stared at me for a moment, saying nothing. Then she put the pencil down and leaned back in her chair. “Tell me about the foster homes.”