Minor in possession jpb-8

by J. A. Jance

  In his own way, Calvin Crenshaw was probably every bit as much of a crackpot as his wife was. Years of police work have convinced me that there's no point in arguing with nuts. It's a waste of time, breath, and energy.

  His gaze met and held mine. "I must caution you, Mr. Beaumont, that if you mention any of what we've discussed here tonight to anyone else, I'll categorically deny it."

  "And if you deny it, then it doesn't exist, is that the idea?"

  Calvin Crenshaw smiled. "Generally speaking. Something like that. My word against yours and all that."

  "So that's how it is?"

  Calvin nodded, smiling again. "I'm glad we understand one another, but I do have one question for you."

  "What's that?"

  "Louise tells me everything, you see. Everything. Sometimes she even lets me watch. The last time she was with Joey, he tried to borrow some money from her."

  "How much?"

  "Twenty-five thousand dollars. Naturally, she refused to give it to him, but considering what all happened, I've been doing some serious thinking about it since. At the time Joey asked for the money, he threatened to tell me about their affair."

  "In other words, he tried to blackmail her."

  "I suppose that's what you call it, but as soon as Louise told him it wouldn't work, that I already knew what was going on, he backed right off. Didn't seem to have the stomach for it somehow."

  "So what's your question?"

  "I know his parents are loaded, at least his father is. Why do you suppose he needed that much money?" Calvin asked.

  Of all the questions Calvin Crenshaw could have been asking, should have been asking, that one seemed like one of the least likely, particularly since it pointed the loaded gun of motive directly back at his own head and at Louise's as well.

  "I have no idea," I replied.

  "Oh well," Calvin said resignedly, sounding genuinely disappointed.

  I stood looking down at him, feeling a sense of total disgust. This voyeuristic little shit and his promiscuous wife, masters of the art of doublespeak, played out their ugly little games behind a mask of helping-profession respectability. I realized then that this was just like my experience with Ringo. I had been in the same room with a snake, a human one this time, without sensing the danger, without realizing I was in jeopardy. I couldn't help wondering if Calvin Crenshaw wasn't just as dangerous as Ringo, and maybe even a little less predictable.

  I turned to go. Carefully putting the cat down on the floor, Calvin got up and followed me after all. He stopped in the doorway.

  "By the way, Louise and I have reconsidered. No matter what she said to that attorney of yours, you're welcome to come back and finish out your program."

  I couldn't believe he was serious, but he was, continuing on with bland indifference.

  "You'll need to check first and make sure we have room. We generally run a ninety-five percent occupancy rate, but we'll work you in."

  "Thanks for the offer, Calvin," I said firmly. "I'll think it over."

  With that, I stepped onto the sidewalk and hurried toward the Subaru, inhaling the clean, sharp air of the cool desert night. Above me, myriad yellow stars winked bright against the velvety black sky.

  One of those distant, twinkling diamonds had to be mine, I thought thankfully-my own personal lucky star. After all, Louise Crenshaw had wanted me, and I hadn't even noticed. Unwittingly, without even noticing the trap, I had blundered away slick as a whistle.

  I felt eternally and abjectly grateful.

  CHAPTER 13

  Ames had left the handset of his wireless phone just inside my door, and its cheerful chirping woke me early Saturday morning.

  "Daddy," Kelly said when I answered. "Is that you? Are you awake?"

  "I am now," I mumbled. "Barely. What time is it?"

  "Just after seven, California time. Sorry to disturb you, but I've got a date to play tennis at eight. It's a little late, but happy birthday. Hope you had fun."

  "Thanks. Ralph Ames took me out to dinner." My early morning engines hadn't quite caught fire. Since Kelly and I have never operated on quite the same wavelength, what followed was a long, awkward pause.

  "Scott said you wanted to talk to me."

  "That's right. I do."

  "What about?" Her question was abrupt. She was worried about whatever was coming and wanted to get it over with.

  "Joey Rothman," I answered quietly.

  There was another long pause, but when she spoke she sounded exasperated. "Daddy, I already told you, nothing happened. I mean, we didn't go to bed or anything, if that's what you're worried about. Don't you trust me?"

  Her whimpered question seemed to be verging on tears. That was the last thing I wanted. "Please, Kelly. Don't get upset. What you tell us may very well help us figure out what happened to him, that's all."

  "You mean you're working on the case?"

  "Something like that."

  "Oh," she said, but she didn't volunteer any further information.

  There was dead, empty silence on the other end of the phone. So that was how it would be. If I was playing cop and looking for answers, Kelly wasn't about to make it easy. It's the kind of diversionary strategy she learned at her mother's knee. My best countermeasure was to tackle the problem head-on.

  "Did Joey tell you about Michelle Owens?" I asked. "Did you know they were going together?"

  I heard the sharp intake of breath. "No." There was a small pause. "He lied to me about that, but it didn't matter."

  "What do you mean, it didn't matter?"

  "Daddy, are you listening to me? We weren't going together. It wasn't like that. We talked mostly, just talked. I thought he was really rad. You know, exciting."

  "Like forbidden fruit."

  "Maybe. Anyway, we were just getting to know each other."

  As far as I can tell, the word "rad" roughly translates into something my generation would have called "cool." As for the words "getting to know each other"-those must have changed entirely since I was Kelly's age. The probing kiss I had seen Joey plant on Kelly's lips had been well beyond the glad-to-make-your-acquaintance stage of human sexual relations. I'm not so far out of touch that I'd mistake a kiss like that for a platonic one. My daughter and I were suffering from a classic case of failure to communicate.

  "So what did the two of you talk about, Kelly?"

  "You."

  Her one-word answer surprised me. "Me?" I echoed.

  "Joey was more interested in you than he was in me. He wanted to know exactly where you were a police officer and what kind of work you did. You know, robbery, homicide, that kind of thing. When I told him you had a lot of money, he said you were probably on the take. We almost had a fight about that, but I told him. You know…about Anne Corley."

  She was finally opening up a little, telling me more than the bare minimum, but I knew the next question could turn her off again, just like a faucet, but she had brought up something that sounded like a common thread.

  "Did he ask you for money, Kel?"

  "No. Why would he do that?"

  "I just thought he might have, that's all."

  "Well, he didn't. He must have known I didn't have any."

  I didn't know whether to be relieved or sad that my "common thread" had so quickly become a dead end.

  "And then what happened?"

  "We talked mostly and…"

  "And what?"

  "And stuff."

  "What kind of stuff?"

  "You know. I mean, you saw us."

  "I saw you necking."

  "Daddy, you don't understand. All the boys around here are such children, and Joey seemed so…"

  "Experienced?" God help me, I couldn't keep from filling in the blank, although I wanted to bite my tongue as soon as the word passed my lips.

  "Yes," Kelly whispered.

  Joey Rothman was dead, but I think Kelly was still more than half infatuated with him. I wanted to shake her, tell her to wake up and smell the coffe
e. With any kind of luck, maybe she would grow up enough to see that being experienced is only half the battle. You also have to know what to do with those experiences.

  "Joey was wrong about you, wasn't he, Daddy?"

  "Wrong about what?"

  "When he said you were working undercover for the DEA. I told him that was crazy, that you do homicide not drugs and that you were there for treatment just like everybody else." she stopped and took a breath.

  "Yes, kelly," I answered wearily. "I was there for treatment. Period."

  "And you weren't working undercover."

  "No."

  "That's what Mr. Joe said too. You know, the counselor back at the ranch? In his office that day he said you were a substance abuser just like the rest of them and that he was sure you didn't have anything to do with what had happened to Joey."

  Suddenly, Scott's remark about good old Burton Joe being on my side clicked into focus.

  "I've gotta go now, Daddy. My ride's waiting outside. Did that help?"

  "As a matter of fact, it did," I told her. "A lot. Thanks."

  "Okay."

  "And, Kelly? One more thing."

  "What's that?" A guarded wariness came into her voice, as though she dreaded what other intrusive questions I might ask.

  "I love you, Kelly."

  Her relief was apparent even over the phone. "I love you, too, Daddy. Bye."

  For a long time, I lay there on the bed, thinking about Joey Rothman and his fruitless quest for money. He hadn't asked Kelly, but he had tried accumulating cash in at least two other places. From the sound of it, his relationship with Kelly had been nothing more than a cover for intelligence-seeking about me, but with Rhonda and Louise, he sounded as though he was gathering getaway money. Rhonda was probably right. In all likelihood he would have moved elsewhere and then reinvested his capital right back in the same business-whatever that was.

  I may have dozed again for a little while. The next time I opened my eyes, I had left Joey Rothman far behind and found myself wondering what to do with this unexpectedly unstructured day. At Ironwood Ranch, every moment had been measured and accounted for. Now, here I was in a strange limbo where I wasn't exactly on vacation, wasn't exactly in treatment, and couldn't very well go home, not when Detective Reyes-Gonzales had given me strict orders to hang around. Maybe Ralph Ames would have some brilliant idea. Besides, I wanted to have a heart-to-heart chat with him and let him know about the dark underbelly of Ironwood Ranch.

  I headed for the shower. Later, when I came back out to get dressed, I was chagrined to discover that I was down to my last clean set of underwear. The only socks I had left were the mismatched pair consisting of one blue and one black. It was time to do laundry. It was past time to do laundry.

  Once I was dressed, I gathered up the small pile that contained my newest dirty clothes and went in search of a washer/dryer and coffee, not necessarily in that order.

  In the kitchen, on Ralph Ames' snow-white Corian countertop, I found an insulated carafe filled with hot coffee, a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and a note. The note, written in Ames' precise script, told me that unfortunately he had a prior commitment that would keep him busy most of the day, but that he'd be back late in the afternoon. Together we'd do something about dinner.

  So I was on my own, for the whole day. Knowing that, I had no reason to rush into doing the laundry. I opened a sliding pocket door off the kitchen far enough to see that the room behind it was indeed the laundry. It smelled rotten in there. The penetrating stench seemed dreadfully out of place, especially in Ralph Ames' otherwise immaculate house. Quickly I dropped my bundle on the floor and shut the door again to keep the foul odor locked inside, then I turned to the serious business of coffee.

  Awkwardly, holding the carafe with my arm, the glass of orange juice in one hand, and an empty cup in the other, I pushed open a sliding glass door with my shoulder and ventured out onto the patio to soak up some of Arizona's much-touted autumn sunshine. It was high time.

  I settled down at a glass-topped patio table beside the pool and leaned back in the chair, with my eyes closed at times, feeling the warmth of the bright, brassy sun on the side of my face. Behind me I heard the usual city sounds-muted tires scrubbing on pavement, the sporadic rumble of occasional trucks, and once the blaring squall of a passing ambulance. The city was there all right, at my back and out of sight behind the glaring white stucco of Ralph Ames' rambling house, while before me loomed the rugged majesty of Camelback Mountain.

  Ames had mentioned it to me once or twice, talked about how he considered himself privileged to live with that giant mound of red rock and its occasional internal grumblings as one of his closest neighbors. Sitting there quietly, sipping the sweet pulpy orange juice, I gradually came to understand what he had meant. A soothing, almost palpable silence drifted down the jagged sandstone cliffs like a veil of dense fog, wrapping itself around me and, for a brief while, blocking out all the disquieting circumstances of the past few days.

  I may have actually slept for a moment or two, but finally, I roused myself and poured a cup of steaming coffee. Alternating the hot coffee with cool sips of orange juice. I sat for more than an hour, allowing myself to think about each of the players in turn considering them individually and collectively:

  Joey Rothman, a dead creep with no socially redeeming value, had evidently believed I was really some kind of undercover supercop sent to nail his ass. He had believed it enough, despite Kelly's protestations to the contrary, that he had sicced his pet rattlesnake on me. He hadn't tried to put the touch on Kelly in his search for investment capital, but I wondered how many others besides Louise Crenshaw and Rhonda had been approached in his quest for quick cash.

  Rhonda Attwood, Joey's mother, seemed convinced that he was responsible for the attempt on my life, but despite the fact that nothing in her son's grubby life made his death seem worthy of revenge, and despite good advice to the contrary, Rhonda persisted in the illogical notion she could or should single-handedly take on whoever was responsible for her son's death. There was a good chance that her bungling around in the case would backfire and drive the killer or killers to ground.

  Michelle, the dead man's pregnant "fiancee" had been jilted twice-once by Joey's behavior with Kelly and once by a bullet fired form my. 38. I had asked Kelly if she had known about Michelle, and now I wondered if Michelle had known about Kelly. If so, what had been her reaction? On the surface, Michelle Owens had seemed insubstantial, almost a will-o'-the-wisp, and yet pulling the trigger on a handgun doesn't require much physical strength. Anger does wonders for itchy trigger fingers.

  That brought me back to the lieutenant colonel, father of the pregnant non-bride. He was a definite possibility, having both motive and opportunity, but there was part of me that hoped it wasn't him. The two of us were too much alike, had too much in common.

  Finally, I came around to the Crenshaws, those wonderful horrific folks, scum parading under the guise of small-town middle-class respectability. Louise had snared the unsuspecting Joey for an insignificant sexual dalliance, with her impotent husband watching from the sidelines and urging her on. No wonder those two had been totally impervious to Joey's clumsy blackmail attempt. Of the three, I had a tough time choosing who was the most reprehensible.

  And here was I, poor old J.P. Beaumont who never did anything to anybody, involved in this mess all the way up you my eyeteeth, stuck in the middle of this rogue's galley briar-patch. The more I tried to get away, the deeper I sank, trapped in muck, hoping against hope that Detective Reyes-Gonzales would find a way to bring this impossible muddle to some kind of satisfactory conclusion. With any kind of luck, the lady would be good at her job.

  Maybe I was no loner a prime suspect, but until Detective Reyes-Gonzales straightened things out, she wasn't likely to let me get on an airplane and go back home. The prospect of hanging around Arizona indefinitely with nothing to do but wait wasn't one I relished.

  With the t
hought in mind, I put down my emptied coffee cup and went to start the washing machine. The smell in the laundry room hadn't gotten any better. Shorty Rojas or whoever had gathered up my personal effects from the cabin at Ironwood Ranch had evidently dumped my wet sandbagging clothes into the laundry bag and tied the damn thing shut. Anyone who's ever had the misfortune of forgetting a wet bath towel in a clothes hamper for a day or two knows what I'm talking about. There was another smell, too hovering in the background, but the odor of the moldy clothes was so overpowering that at first I couldn't quite identify the other one.

  My mother always insisted on sorting clothes into three stacks-whites, light-colored, and dark-colored. After first locating a large plastic bottle of bleach and pouring some into the filling washing machine, I began the sorting process. The ones on top, still dank and wet and shot through with sand, came out first and fell into a sodden heap. I left them there, figuring I'd wash those separately.

  Next came a fistful of socks and underwear. I sorted out the socks. Loose sand had sifted down form the wet things at the top of the bag. When I shook a T-shirt to get rid of the sand, something small and white came free from the material and flew across the room like a guided missile, landing with a tiny soft thud several feet away on Ralph Ames' surgically clean kitchen floor. Not wanting to leave a mess, I went to retrieve whatever it was, and it turned out to be a mouse. A dead white mouse. A reeking dead white mouse.

  For a sickening moment I was back in the cabin at Ironwood Ranch looking down at a regurgitated pile of fur and tail. I'm not scared of dead mice, but if a mouse could be concealed in my dirty clothes bag, I wondered what else could.

  Dreading what I might find, I left the mouse where it was and went back to the laundry room. Gingerly I shook out the entire bag, emptying the contents onto the floor and then kicking through the resulting heap to see if there were any other unwelcome surprises. There weren't. The only things left in my dirty clothes bag were moldy, dirty clothes.