Alibis and Amethysts

by Sharon Pape

  She took a quick shower, changed into beige chinos and a lightweight brown sweater and ate half an English muffin with orange marmalade. While she loofahed, dressed and chewed, she compiled a mental list of how to go about finding Peggy’s killer. The first question that had to be answered definitively was whether Peggy had died of natural causes or, as Jaye believed, of man-made ones.

  Since the shop was rarely busy before ten o’clock, she took a seat behind the main counter that was situated in the center of the retail space and put in a call to the sheriff’s office in Prescott. The woman who answered informed her in an icy tone that the sheriff would release the cause of death after the medical examiner provided him with that information. She hung up before Jaye could even say “thank you,” leaving her to think that the woman was either being besieged with such calls or that she’d been close to the deceased. She could hardly have been hired to interact with the public if her attitude was always so charming.

  Working as a free agent, Jaye didn’t have to wait for anyone to give her the green light to get started. Besides, all she intended to do for now was stop by for a casual chat with each of the other shopkeepers and take their temperature regarding their colleague and her sudden demise. Since Sierra appeared to be the only one with a motive, Jaye was determined to find someone else who also had a reason to be glad Peggy was dead.

  The bells she’d nailed to the shop’s door jingled merrily, announcing the first customer of the day. Jaye remained where she was and called out a cheerful “hello” to the middle-aged couple who’d walked in.

  “Please feel free to look around. If there’s anything I can help you with, just let me know.”

  The woman smiled and thanked her, her eyes already dancing from display to display. The man followed in her wake, clearly counting the minutes until he could suggest leaving without starting an argument.

  In the months since Jaye had opened her shop, she’d picked up some important sales acumen. Most customers preferred to browse at their leisure without her hovering as their “tour guide.” They generally spent less time in the shop and were less likely to purchase anything when she injected herself into the process. Of course, there was a small minority who came in with a specific purchase in mind or a limited amount of time, but they generally weren’t shy about requesting her help.

  “You were just being . . . enthusiastic,” Sierra had said when Jaye first mentioned her belated epiphany. “You wanted to share your knowledge on the subject.”

  “In other words, I was acting like a pompous ass.”

  That’s when Sierra had had one of her high-wattage lightbulb moments—she’d come up with the idea of giving miniseminars for people who wanted to learn more about “rocks and stuff,” as she’d put it. Although Jaye had initially balked at the concept, her First Friday talks wound up nearly doubling her business.

  The woman who was browsing around the store with her husband in tow finally selected a small nugget of pink quartz suspended from a thin silver chain. “My granddaughter told me I should take a crystal into the vortex so it can absorb the positive energy there.” she said uncertainly when Jaye was ringing up the sale. “But I have to confess I don’t really understand what she meant.”

  “Well, a lot of people believe crystals and gemstones have powers that can influence our bodies and minds in beneficial ways,” Jaye explained. “The belief goes all the way back to the Greeks.” She was always careful not to provide any kind of guarantee along with the crystals, not only because it was foolish to guarantee something that was based solely on anecdotal evidence, but also because her science background made it hard for her to shed all of her own skepticism. In the six months since she’d opened the shop, though, a dozen people had returned to tell her that the stones they’d purchased had helped them through whatever trials they’d been facing. Of course, believing in the power of the stones might have created a placebo effect, but who could say for sure? Claim by claim, Jaye was becoming more of a believer herself.

  “I’m afraid I still don’t get what the vortexes are,” the woman said.

  “The sites we call ‘psychic vortexes’ today have been sacred places to Native medicine men and women for thousands of years. They come here to reconnect with the earth and the rest of the universe.”

  “So the vortexes are supposed to increase the power of the crystals?” the woman asked tentatively.

  “Exactly.” Jaye handed her a little shopping bag with her purchase and one of the vortex maps that she kept on the counter. “This map will show you where the different vortexes are located. Some are easy enough to reach by car.”

  The woman thanked her as her husband bustled her out of the shop.

  Stacey Winston arrived shortly after to claim her wallet. After thanking Jaye again, she shuffled through the credit cards and announced with a mixture of relief and bewilderment that nothing was missing.

  “I’m sure I’ve never been in here before,” she said, her brow furrowing as she tried to figure out how the wallet had come to be in Jaye’s store, “and if nothing’s missing, then it probably wasn’t stolen, right?”

  “Maybe a kid swiped it from your handbag on a dare,” Jaye suggested, but she could tell the younger woman didn’t buy it anymore than she did. The incident would simply have to be filed under “unexplained” for now. By the time Stacey sailed out of the shop, she appeared to have already filed and forgotten it. But in spite of everything else on her mind, Jaye wasn’t able to dismiss it quite so easily.

  Chapter 4

  “Hey, Jaye, wait up!” Daniel Yazzi did a slalom run around the traffic instead of waiting for the light to change in his favor.

  Jaye had just come from the parking garage behind the stores when she heard her name. Searching for the caller, she stopped on the sidewalk in front of the fudge shop, a human jetty to the tourists swirling around her. She raised her hand and waved when she saw Daniel zigzagging across the busy street.

  “What the hell happened last night?” he asked when he reached her.

  “It’s all over town already?” Jaye didn’t know why that surprised her. Between cell phones, Facebook and Twitter, a news bite could whip around the planet in seconds. Not even Sedona was off the grid.

  “It’s all anybody’s talking about,” he said, “but no one seems to have a real handle on it. You wouldn’t believe some of the gossip flying around.”

  That she had no trouble believing. She grabbed Daniel’s hand and pulled him over to a newly vacated bench outside Scooper Doopers, the wildly popular ice cream shop. They sat down, tucking their feet beneath the bench so they wouldn’t trip the people walking by.

  “It’s crazy,” Jaye said. “We’re the ones who found Peggy, and the only thing we know for sure is that she’s dead.”

  “You and Sierra holding up okay?” he asked.

  Jaye managed a lopsided smile. “Better than last night anyway.”

  He laid one of his big hands on top of hers for a moment. “You know you can always call on me,” he said. “I’ve been told I’m a good listener, and I’m pretty good at keeping my mouth shut.”

  “And I’m the one who told you that.” Jaye laughed, feeling her muscles relax. She hadn’t realized how tense she still was.

  “Then I guess you can trust the source.” Daniel grinned, his teeth a sharp slash of white against the darker hue of his skin. He stood five ten in his faux snakeskin boots, a good five inches taller than Jaye. His black hair was pulled back and fastened with a leather thong at the nape of his neck.

  He was the first person Jaye had met when she moved to Sedona and very nearly the last, having almost been run down by his car. He’d been returning from Flagstaff in a hurry to get back to his office to pick up a tour group. She’d been chasing her Yankees cap, stolen by a gust of wind. After they’d finished shouting at each other, Daniel had offered to buy
her a beer, and for some reason that still eluded her, she’d accepted. He’d arranged to have his cousin take care of the tour, and they’d sat and talked in a booth in an empty bar for over an hour.

  She’d told him about the shop she was opening, and he’d told her about Premier Navajo Tours, the business he’d started with his cousin George. Although the name sounded grand, he’d said candidly that the whole operation amounted to two open-air Jeeps that took tourists bouncing off-road to reach the vortexes and some stunning views of the red rock that couldn’t be seen from the paved roads in the family sedan.

  The beer had become two and an order of nachos and cheese. Jaye had enjoyed listening to Daniel speak. The cadence of his speech had an otherness that pleased her ear. When she’d told Sierra about the encounter, her friend had laughed and said that the “otherness” came from Daniel having been raised on the reservation, where English rode on the rhythm of the Navajo tongue.

  Since that first encounter, Jaye had gone to dinner with Daniel on several occasions and to a movie once, but she’d never thought of it as dating, and he’d never pushed for it to become more.

  “Do you have time for lunch?” he asked now.

  Jaye glanced at her watch. It had taken her ten minutes to drive from her shop to Uptown Sedona. Factoring in another ten for the return trip, she had forty minutes left of her lunch hour to start her investigation. “Thanks,” she said with a sigh, “but the only lunch I have time for is an energy bar on my way back to work.”

  “You spoil yourself rotten.”

  “I really have to think about hiring someone part-time.”

  “It works a whole lot better if you skip all the thinking and get right down to the hiring.”

  “Did I ever tell you that you’re also good with pithy advice?”

  “No, but as soon as I get back to the office, I’ll be sure to add it to my résumé.”

  They chatted for another minute before Jaye excused herself to run her “errands.” Although she trusted Daniel to be discreet, the fewer people who knew what she was up to, the less likely a slip of the tongue could feed Sedona’s enthusiastic grapevine. She had a hunch that people would be less guarded and more apt to open up if they were talking to a fellow shopkeeper rather than a fellow shopkeeper who was moonlighting as a would-be sleuth.

  Her plan was simple. She’d drop in for a quick chat with each shopkeeper or manager. If Peggy’s death was the talk of the town, it shouldn’t be difficult to bring up the subject without raising any eyebrows, and if she played her cards right, the interviewees might not even realize they were being plumbed for information—at least for a little while.

  Daniel headed off to Finnegan’s to feed his enchilada craving, and Jaye started her career as a private eye. She bypassed the restaurants, since they were the busiest from noon to two. That left the shops that sold candy and ice cream, a few art galleries, crystal shops, jewelry shops featuring silver and turquoise and a dozen businesses that catered to the tourist trade with basic items like T-shirts, postcards, gewgaws, tarantulas and scorpions encased in Lucite and kitschy ceramic pieces with a Western theme, straight from China. Jaye didn’t understand how so many shops managed to survive with such remarkably similar inventories, but somehow they did.

  With no leads to guide her and no experience to rely on, she chose the first place she came to that wasn’t crowded with customers. It happened to be Elmer’s Fudge, where a large window lured passersby inside to watch the fudge-making process. Jaye had visited the store on several occasions when her “want power” KO’d her willpower, but she still wasn’t fully prepared for the dense aroma of chocolate that assailed her and made her candy-loving heart beat faster. She gave herself a silent scolding and tried to remain focused on the reason she was in there. Stick to business, stick to business, stick to business.

  Half the showcases held trays heaped with chocolates of every description, while the other half were devoted completely to fudge. There were ten rotating flavors of fudge, and barely a week went by without a sign in the window inviting patrons in to taste the newest flavor they’d created. Stick to business, stick to business, stick to business!

  Ten minutes later Jaye left the store with a bag of maple walnut fudge shot through with a thick ribbon of chocolate, but without a single bit of useful information. She didn’t fare any better at her next stop either, but since that store sold jewelry, she managed to leave without purchasing anything. Trying hard not to let her lack of success unnerve her, she marched herself into one of the shops that carried tourist miscellanea. She knew the owner, Elaine Feldman, well enough to exchange greetings with her if their paths crossed. Like most of the residents of Sedona, Elaine had come from somewhere else, in her case Lansing, Michigan.

  When Jaye walked in, Elaine was busy packing a customer’s purchase of cowboy salt and pepper shakers in enough bubble wrap to see them through a nuclear blast. Mayhem, her white Maltipoo dog, was curled up in his little bed bedside the counter as usual. At the sound of the door opening, he raised one eyelid, determined Jaye posed no threat and went right back to sleep.

  While Elaine finished up at the register, Jaye started browsing through the T-shirts. She didn’t have long to wait. The minute Elaine bid the customer good-bye, she headed straight over to Jaye. She was a large woman in every respect, but she moved with delicate grace as if she were a human dirigible, her ballet-slippered feet barely brushing the floor. Her pink, gauzy outfit floated around her, and her billowing, blond hair added to the illusion that she sailed on the wind.

  “Hi,” she said brightly, a fine sheen of moisture on her pink cheeks in spite of the mild weather. “I don’t see many locals in here unless they’re making the rounds with out-of-towners. Can I help you with anything?”

  “Actually, you can,” Jaye replied with a smile. No secret agenda here. “I’m looking for a T-shirt to send a friend for his birthday.”

  “Does he play golf?”

  “As a matter of fact, he does.” Of course, he could also have played polo or rugby or pickup sticks, since Jaye was creating him on the spot. After a few minutes they’d narrowed her selection down to a shirt with a golf motif in a blue that Jaye swore matched his eyes, size medium. During their abbreviated version of Twenty Questions, Jaye could tell Elaine was dying to bring up the subject of Peggy. She kept shifting her weight from one leg to the other like a little kid who needed to visit the bathroom. It was clear she wouldn’t be able to keep the lid on her curiosity much longer.

  As she rang up the sale, the dam burst. “I don’t mean to be nosy,” she blurted out, “but I heard that you were the one who found poor Peggy. That must have been so awful for you.” The words were barely out of her mouth when her cheeks flushed a deeper pink. She busied herself with the receipt that had just popped out of the register, clearly embarrassed to have lost control of herself in that way.

  Determined not to let Elaine’s discomfort end the interview before it even started, Jaye dove right in. “You have no idea—it was a terrible shock. I didn’t know Peggy very well, but finding her that way . . .” She let her voice trail off, hoping Elaine would feel obligated to fill in the blanks.

  “I don’t even want to imagine,” Elaine said, shaking her head as if to put her brain on notice that any such imaginings would not be welcome. “Do the police think she was murdered?” Although there was no one else in the store, she’d lowered her voice in the way people do when discussing unpleasant subjects like death and diarrhea.

  “The ME hasn’t determined the cause of death yet.” Jaye lowered her voice in an effort to nurture the little bond they were forging. They sounded like coconspirators exchanging sensitive information. “It’s scary to think that someone around here is capable of murder,” she whispered. “And why Peggy?”

  “Maybe it was a robbery gone bad,” Elaine suggested. “Was anything missing?”

 
“I don’t think so,” Jaye said, realizing that she hadn’t seen a purse or anything like it at the crime scene. More importantly, she hadn’t even thought to look for one. A fine investigator she was starting out to be.

  “If she died of natural causes, don’t you think it’s awfully weird that she just happened to be in Sierra’s yard at the time?” Elaine murmured. “Why would she have been there to begin with? I mean, they weren’t exactly friends. Oh, I’m so sorry,” she added quickly, blushing her way to crimson. “That didn’t come out the way I meant. I wasn’t trying to imply that Sierra was in any way involved in what happened.”

  “I know you didn’t,” Jaye assured her. Unfortunately, that was likely to be the same conclusion the police reached if the ME ruled out natural causes. “I’m sure Peggy’s death is difficult for everyone who knew her. Were the two of you very close?”

  “I knew her for almost ten years,” Elaine said, “but I can’t say I knew her well. She wasn’t exactly what you’d call an open book.”

  “Is there anyone who might have known her better? Did she ever mention family or friends from around here or back in her hometown? Did she ever have guests from out of town?” Jaye realized immediately from the way Elaine’s brow furrowed that she’d crossed some invisible line between idle chatter and interrogation.

  “Are you practicing for the detective squad or something?” Elaine asked a bit stiffly.

  “I was just wondering if there was anyone to plan a service for her or write a decent obit,” Jaye said quickly.

  “Oh,” Elaine relented, “I never thought about that, but you’re right. The least we can do is see to it that her passing is given proper attention.”