Minor in possession jpb-8

by J. A. Jance

  She let the end of the sentence linger in the air. After a momentary pause she asked, "What did those guys want, anyway? Why did they snatch Michelle? The newspaper story didn't shed much light on the whys."

  "Money, for one thing, I guess. Money Joey had lifted from somebody and turned over to Michelle for safekeeping."

  "How much money?"

  "A hundred grand."

  Delcia whistled through her teeth. "Sounds like big-time drug money to me. So maybe he wasn't lying about that after all."

  "No," I said. "Maybe not. And since he seems to have been grabbing at money anywhere he could find it, my guess is that he got in a tight spot with his suppliers and was trying to make good on what he owed them. Either that, or to skip out altogether."

  "Literally robbing Peter to pay Paul," Delcia put in.

  "That's right. The creeps also said something about a paper as well as the money, but all I saw in the briefcase was green stuff, so I don't have any idea what the paper could have been."

  "Maybe Michelle knows something about it," Delcia suggested. "The F.B.I. may have learned something from her about that. Do you know? Did they ask her?"

  "They never got a chance to talk to Michelle, at least not while I was there. The chopper from Fort Huachuca had lifted off before the F.B.I. guys arrived on the scene. As far as I know, they still haven't interviewed either Guy or Michelle."

  "Is it possible that the feds learned something from the prisoners?"

  "Possible," I agreed, "but you know the F.B.I. They didn't breathe a word to anybody else."

  "At least not to you," Delcia interjected good-humoredly.

  My temper flared. "You're right. Not to me. You might have better luck on that score. You're a helluva lot prettier than I am, for one thing, and you're an official detective with an official connection to the case for another. Who am I? Just the poor stupid schmuck who happened to get caught in the cross fire with live bullets flying in every goddamn direction. Why the hell would I need to know anything?"

  "Don't get all bent out of shape," Delcia cautioned. "I'm scheduled to call the F.B.I. this morning. If I find out something you should know, I'll tell you. As soon as I finish with them, I'm on my way to Phoenix for the funeral. Maybe Ralph Ames is right and Rhonda's out getting ready for the funeral. If she shows up in the next hour or so, have the dispatcher put you through to me in the car. Otherwise, when I get there, we'll see what other courses of action to follow."

  "All right," I said grudgingly, knowing full well it was the only sensible thing to do.

  I understand how missing-persons reports work. Police jurisdictions don't much like receiving them when the person in question has been missing less than twenty-four hours. It generates too much wasted paperwork.

  "One more thing," Delcia added. "I did have a call for her. It came in to the department last night. The guys on duty thought it might be important and called me at home."

  "A call for Rhonda?" I asked. "What kind of call? Who from?"

  "A man. Gave his name as Denny Blake. Said he was neighbor of Rhonda's up in Sedona. He said he was worried because he hadn't heard from her in several days."

  "Why'd he call you?"

  "He read about the Joey Rothman case in the Sedona paper and knew I was working on it. He left a message with me to have Rhonda call him."

  "You didn't tell him where she was staying or give him this number, did you?"

  "I'm a cop, Beau," Delcia answered, a sudden chill creeping into her previously cordial voice. "And I'm not stupid."

  "Sorry," I said hurriedly. "I didn't mean for it to sound that way. It's just that I'm worried, that's all. I'll see you when you get here."

  "Hopefully she'll be there by the time I am," Delcia added, but she didn't sound totally convinced, and neither was I.

  "So we wait?" Ames asked, peering at me over his raised coffee cup as I put down the phone.

  "We wait," I told him.

  But as I said before, I'm terrible at waiting. It goes against the grain. I have a compulsion to do something even if what I do may not always be right. Ten minutes later, I picked up the phone, dialed Arizona information, and asked for Denny Blake's number in Sedona. There was no problem. The phone number was there, unlisted. When I dialed it, a man's voice answered on the second ring.

  "Blake's residence," he said.

  I'm used to phone calls being much more difficult to make, people being harder to track down. Denny Blake answered before I had a chance to figure out what I was going to say.

  "My name is Beaumont," I stammered. "J. P. Beaumont."

  "Oh yes," he answered. "Rhonda mentioned you. From the sound of it, you must be some kind of he-man."

  Denny Blake's sibilant s's allowed me to assume that he wasn't His words had a vaguely English cast to them that could have been real or could have been affected, I couldn't tell which, but what he said about Rhonda gave me cause for hope.

  "You're talking about what happened yesterday?" I ventured.

  "She told me all about it," Denny Blake declared enthusiastically. "Everything! From what she said, it must have been exciting. Too exciting for words!"

  "It was exciting, all right," I muttered, but I was beginning to feel better. Obviously Rhonda had been in touch with Denny Blake sometime during the course of the morning.

  "Rhonda doesn't happen to be there right now, does she?" I asked cautiously.

  "She didn't come all the way here," he answered archly. "I wouldn't let her do that. Not with the funeral this afternoon. I met her at a little place in Camp Verde, J J's. They make the most marvelous biscuits and gravy."

  For a moment I was speechless. "So you met her there?" I finally asked. "Why?"

  "To give her the package, of course. I assumed it was important, since Joey had obviously gone to some trouble to send it. I was sure she'd want to have it. ASAP, if you know what I mean."

  "Package?" I asked stupidly. "What package?"

  "I didn't know it was from Joey, not for sure, but I assumed. It had the initials. J.R. penciled on it up in the left-hand corner where the return address is supposed to go, although it was post-marked Sierra Vista. I don't know how he could have gotten all the way down there to mail it, but he must have, poor thing."

  "The package. How did you get it?"

  "The mailman left it with me. Saturday morning, I believe it was. He does that, you know. Leaves things for Rhonda with me if she's not home and stuff for me with her if I'm not. Yes, I'm sure it was Saturday morning, but Rhonda wasn't here. That's not like her, not at all. She usually tells me well in advance if she's going to be away or calls if her plans change. We're pretty much on our own out here-the last of the Mohicans, as it were. The two of us simply have to stick together."

  "But how did you find her, to let her know about the package?"

  "I didn't. She called me. Around seven this morning. Said she'd just realized that when she came to pick up her thing, she'd forgotten to stop by and tell me she was heading back to Phoenix. She must have been positively wild, or she would have remembered. She called as soon as she remembered so I wouldn't worry That's when I told her, and we agreed to meet."

  "And did you?"

  "I already told you. We had biscuits and gravy, at least I did, and I gave her the package."

  "What was in it?"

  "It wasn't a package so much as an envelope. You know, one of those big zipper-type envelopes-the kind bookstores and libraries mail books in when you order them."

  "What was in this envelope?" I persisted.

  "Why, books of course. Several of them, actually. What did you expect?"

  "What did they look like?"

  "Oh, you know. The blank ones."

  "Blank?" I asked.

  "Haven't you seen them? They sell them everywhere in all the stores. Nothing but glorified notebooks really. People use them for diaries, I guess, or to scribble reams and reams of poetry. These had a frightfully ugly paisley design on the covers. A matched set, I'm sure.
"

  "Notebooks. Did she read them?"

  "Don't be absurd. Not while I was there, of course not. Rhonda would never be so rude as to read them in front of me, and it would have been incredibly gauche of me to expect her to. As soon as I finished my coffee, I left her alone so she could read them in private. Words from beyond the grave, as it were."

  "Did you notice what kind of car she was driving?" I asked.

  "I don't notice cars particularly. I suppose she was driving her little green car, whatever that ugly thing is. I could never see how an artist could own such an unsightly automobile."

  "So she was driving the Fiat? Did you see it?"

  "Who are you?" Denny Blake asked, as though he'd suddenly lost track of the beginning of our conversation and couldn't remember who I was or what I wanted. "Why are you asking me all these questions?"

  "I'm trying to locate Rhonda, that's all," I said placatingly. "She left here driving a Lincoln Town Car, and now you say she's in the Fiat."

  "I didn't say anything of the kind," he returned haughtily. "I didn't notice what kind of car she was driving. Why would anyone pay attention to cars in Camp Verde? What an absurd notion!"

  I heard some kind of racket in the background, a loud insistent buzzing.

  "I've got to go now," Denny Blake said energetically. "That's the timer on my oven. I'm baking bread. The biscuits inspired me."

  He hung up. I didn't. I redialed the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department and asked to be patched through to Detective Delcia Reyes-Gonzales. ASAP.

  CHAPTER 22

  "The diary," Delcia murmured immediately, as soon as I told her about my conversation with Denny Blake. "That has to be what else those guys were after."

  "Right," I said. "That's what I figured, too, the moment he mentioned it. Only Michelle didn't have it. By then it was already sitting in Sedona waiting for Rhonda to show up and take possession."

  "Whatever's in it must be hot stuff for them to run the kind of risks they did to get it back."

  "There was the money," I suggested. "Don't forget that."

  "I'm not," Delcia replied, "but the diary may have been their primary target and the money almost an afterthought."

  Delcia was driving between Prescott and Phoenix. Radio transmissions were somewhat spotty. At times I had difficulty hearing her.

  "You said you saw Joey writing in his notebook while you were roommates?" she asked.

  "Yes. One that matched that description, anyway."

  "So given what we know about the Crenshaws…"

  She paused. For a moment I thought she had gone out of range, but instead, she was thinking. "Maybe I'd better take a run over to Wickenburg to check on the Crenshaws before I come on into Phoenix. What kind of car is she driving?"

  "I don't know, not for sure. There's some confusion about that. She left here driving Ralph Ames' white Lincoln Town Car, but she may have gone over to La Posada and picked up the Fiat."

  "I need to know for sure, Beau," Delcia said.

  "Right. I'll find out and let you know. What about the F.B.I.? Did you find out anything from them?"

  "You were right. They never got close to either Michelle or her father last night. They plan to interview both of them this morning."

  Again the transmission faded. "I'm losing you, Delcia. You're breaking up."

  Delcia came back in, her words intermittently fading in and out."…try to find…about car…let me know."

  "I will," I answered, unsure whether she heard me or not. I turned around to Ralph. "Where's the phone book?"

  He took one from the cupboard and handed it to me. "Who are you going to call?"

  "A taxi," I told him. "We've got to find out for sure about the car."

  I called for a cab and was promised one within the occupational standard delay time of twenty minutes. Not wanting to waste those precious minutes in empty waiting, I tried reaching Raymond W. Bliss Hospital on base at Fort Huachuca.

  I expected to be told that Michelle was either in surgery or in the recovery room, but I gambled that Guy Owens would feel enough obligation to Rhonda and me for saving his ass that he'd tell me what he knew, if anything.

  Calling the hospital was an endlessly complicated process because the base telephone exchange was in the process of transferring from one set of prefixes to another. It was another sad case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. The phone company information operators kept sending me on wild-goose chases to numbers that were no longer valid or to phones that rang forever without anyone hearing or answering.

  I'm a stubborn man, though, and I kept dialing away, one number after the other, all the while cursing the dimwits who broke up the Bell system. Those screwballs obviously never heard that old tried-and-true maxim: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

  At last I was connected to the base hospital. I asked to speak to either Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens or his daughter Michelle. "They're both patients there," I said.

  "I'm sorry," the operator returned smoothly. "We have no one listed by that name."

  She was lying, stonewalling me, that was certain. On a fainthearted whim, I tried another tack and asked to speak to Colonel Miller, commander of the hospital, but occasionally even the most unlikely wagers pay off. The hospital operator didn't hesitate.

  "I'll put you through," she purred, and did.

  "Colonel Miller here," a gruff voice said into the phone a moment later.

  "My name is Beaumont," I said. "J. P. Beaumont. I'm looking for a patient of yours, a Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens."

  "He's gone," Miller replied shortly. "Dismissed."

  "Dismissed," I echoed. "What about his daughter? What about Michelle?"

  "Mr. Beaumont," Colonel Miller said, "Guy mentioned you to me. In fact, he spoke very highly of your efforts on his behalf as well as his daughter's, but when he left here, he gave me very clear instructions that I wasn't to give any information to anyone other than to say they had both left the hospital. No exceptions. He seemed to think he and his daughter might still be in some danger."

  "That's a distinct possibility," I agreed.

  "When I talked to them, that's what the F.B.I. said as well, but I told them the same thing. Guy and Michelle are gone, and I don't know where. I can't tell what I don't know."

  I could almost hear Colonel Miller smiling into the phone. He had gotten a charge out of telling the F.B.I. to go piss up a rope. Rank notwithstanding, stonewalling notwithstanding, he sounded like my kind of guy.

  "I don't suppose that sat too well with the F.B.I., did it?" I observed dryly.

  "Not particularly," he answered with a brief laugh. "As a matter of fact, I don't think they liked it at all. One thing I would like to say, though, Mr. Beaumont…"

  "Yes? What's that?" I asked hopefully, thinking maybe he'd relent after all and tell me something useful.

  "I personally would like to thank you for what you did for Guy and Michelle yesterday. Guy Owens and I have been friends, good friends, ever since 'Nam. As far as I'm concerned, I owe you one."

  The cab arrived outside and honked twice.

  "You're welcome," I said. "I've got to go. If you hear from Guy, tell him to get in touch with me right away. I need to talk to him. It's urgent."

  "I certainly will," Colonel Miller replied. "You can count on it."

  Instinctively, I knew I could. Miller hadn't given me any more information than he had given the F.B.I., but now at least I had some confidence that it was because he really didn't know anything more. And having somebody like him owe you one isn't all bad. You never can tell when that kind of obligation might come in handy.

  Ralph had gone to the door to tell the cab driver I was coming. "Hurry," he urged. "The guy says the meter's running."

  "Give me an extra set of keys for the Lincoln," I said.

  "Why?" he asked. "If you're taking a cab, why do you need keys?"

  "Because if the Lincoln's there in the lot at La Posada, I'll come back in that. If
it's not, I'll hot-wire the Fiat. Or would you rather I hot-wired the Lincoln?"

  "I'll get the other keys," Ames said.

  He fished around in the drawer for an extra set, and I was out the door in a flash. At La Posada, the Lincoln was nowhere in sight. The Fiat remained parked exactly where we'd left it. I paid off the cabbie, hot-wire the Spider, folded myself inside, and drove home.

  Back at Ralph's house, I got myself patched back through to Delcia, who had turned off Black Canyon Highway and was headed for Wickenburg.

  "She's in the Lincoln," I said. "As far as we know."

  "That still doesn't sound very definite," Delcia returned.

  "All I can tell you is the make of the car she left here driving this morning. That's the best I can do."

  "It'll have to do. I'll alert people to be on the lookout for it. Give me the DMV number."

  With Ames' help I gave Delcia the license number as well as a complete description of the missing Lincoln, then I went on to tell her that Michelle and Guy had left the hospital at Fort Huachuca bound for an undisclosed destination.

  "Is there a chance they went home?" Delcia asked. "We need to talk to her, to find out if she can help us shed any light on this diary thing. Have you tried calling their house?"

  "I thought of it, but there's no point," I said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because the assholes who snatched Michelle also cut the phone lines. I doubt anyone has gotten around to fixing them. It's the weekend, you know."

  "You're probably right," she said. "So what are you going to do?"

  In the background, Ralph was hustling around the kitchen, juicing oranges, frying eggs, toasting bread.

  "It looks like I'm going to eat breakfast before I do anything else," I said. "And then, if Rhonda doesn't show up here by two or so, we'll go over to the church and hang around. The funeral's scheduled for three. I can't imagine her missing that. What are you going to do?"

  "I'll see the Crenshaws first, at least try to, and then…"

  "Not without a backup, I hope."

  "No," Delcia reassured me. "Not without backup. I've radioed for Mike Hanson to meet me there. You remember, the deputy from Yarnell."