“I not kill Kapitan.”
The black-and-white-and-pink jumpsuit should have made Rada Tesema look foolish, as was its apparent intent, but Tesema’s innate dignity won out. While only of average height, his delicate features and straight carriage even in shackles lent him a nobility seldom seen in the Fourth Avenue Jail. He didn’t look like a murderer, but few murderers did.
“My wife, my children…” He swallowed, then tried again. “You must help them!”
A spate of cursing rang through the corridor outside, mingling with a woman’s answering please-baby-don’t-be-like-that-I-just-sucked-him-not-fucked-him. Although relatively new, the jail already reeked of damaged dreams and lost hope.
Tesema didn’t belong here.
I leaned across the table. “Mr. Tesema, did you or didn’t you show up at Ernst’s house yesterday morning? If you did, why didn’t you call the police immediately? And if you didn’t, why not?”
A flicker in his eyes, a quick look away. Here came the lies. “I told police I busy with other Loving Care client that morning. I call Kapitan Ernst, say I come later in day. He say is fine.”
“Loving Care?”
“Name of agency I work for. Have many clients, not just Kapitan.”
“Did you give the police the other client’s name?”
He looked down at the floor. “Name not important.”
There had been no other client. Maybe the police were right and Tesema had snapped. But when I recalled the murder scene, the duct tape tying Ernst to his wheelchair, it didn’t make sense. Tesema had a practical nurse’s well-developed arm muscles formed by lifting people in and out of beds and wheelchairs. He wouldn’t need to tape an old man down in order to beat him to death.
A woman might, though.
The cursing and crying outside started up again even worse than before, so I fired off my next question to get Tesema’s mind off it. “Did Ernst have any female visitors?”
“Women?” He glanced at the door leading to the corridor. “He too helpless for…” A flush darkened his already ebony skin. Then he recovered himself. “The Kapitan once talk to me about crazy woman, how she bother him. But I never see her.”
Could this have been the same woman Ernst’s neighbor saw banging on his door the night of the murder? “Did Ernst say why this ‘crazy woman’ was bothering him?”
He started to spread his hands, but the shackles around his wrists prevented the I-don’t-know gesture. “He say she call and call. He very angry.”
“Did he give a name?”
“No. He just call her bad word.” Deeply uncomfortable, he looked away again, tried not to listen to the shrieks outside.
Mrs. Hillman had described the woman as skimpily clad. “This bad word, was it ‘whore’?”
Tesema seemed ready to faint from embarrassment. “You nice lady. Please not to talk like that.”
“But was that the word he used?”
“Yes,” he whispered, unable to meet my eyes.
The woman finally stopped her caterwauling, but the man continued to curse. From what I could make out, he’d gutted the man they were arguing about. But at last Tesema had given me something concrete to go on. There would be a record of the calls to and from Ernst’s house. In the meantime, Tesema was doing himself no favors by sticking to his improbable story.
“If there was no other client, and if you did show up for your regular appointment at Ernst’s house yesterday morning, you probably got some of his blood on you. Innocently, of course.” As had I. Last night, when I undressed for bed, I discovered blood smears on my Reeboks. I threw them in the garbage with my bloodied shirt.
Someone in the jail had been coaching him, because he admitted to nothing. “Police took shoes and all clothes I wear.”
That didn’t sound good. It was my guess that he had arrived on schedule, found Ernst, checked to see if he was still alive—bloodying himself in the meantime—then fled. “Mr. Tesema, if there is one spot of blood anywhere on your clothes, they will be able to determine exactly whose it is through DNA typing. Do you understand?”
“They can do this?” His words were little more than a mumble.
Didn’t he have a television set? On most cop shows, which I couldn’t bear to watch, crime labs processed DNA samples within minutes. “Oh, yes. The police can also pull Ernst’s phone records to see who called him in the past few weeks. For instance, when he didn’t show up on set, Warren called him twice from his cell before asking me to check on him. There’ll be a record of those calls. If you, as you said you did, phoned to tell him you were too busy to show up for work, there’ll be a record of that call, too. If you didn’t…” Home care agencies preferred their care-givers to call them to report any cancellations, not the client: that way they could send out a replacement. His story stunk. “How long have you been Ernst’s care-giver?”
“Seven…no, eight months. Man before me, he quit. Said Kapitan Ernst too mean.”
Which begged the question of why Tesema was still hanging around. “During your time with him, how often did you miss your regular appointment?”
When he looked back up at me, his eyes were filled with outrage. “Never! I not do that! He need my help!”
I gave him a grim smile. “Do you see, Mr. Tesema, how easy it is to find out if a person is lying? You told the police that you were ‘too busy’ to show up yesterday, but you just admitted to me that you never missed an appointment.”
He hung his head. “I not kill Kapitan Ernst.”
That part I believed, not that my opinion made any difference. Tesema’s utter transparency made him a prosecutor’s wet dream. He needed a good criminal defense attorney, but with his lack of funds would probably wind up with the usual public defender: young, inexperienced, overwhelmed. “My advice is to stop listening to your cell mates and tell your lawyer the truth. That’s the only way he can help you.”
“Only rich men have lawyer.”
“This is America, Mr. Tesema. The court will appoint one for you.”
Tesema shook his head. “Cell mates, they tell me about these free lawyers. They say I be lucky if lawyer remembers my name.”
Having observed the often less-than-scintillating performances of some public defenders, I didn’t argue his point. Still, I tried to sound optimistic. “Don’t give up so fast. For all we know, you might get lucky and draw someone good.”
“I not that lucky.”
Another sad truth. “Have you called your wife yet? Does she know about your situation?”
The visiting room was close and muggy, but the large drop of moisture on his cheek resembled a tear more than it did perspiration. “I try, but jail not allow call to Addis Ababa. Cousin there have phone, not wife.”
I wondered if there was an Ethiopian consulate in Arizona. Probably not, and for the same reason we didn’t have a Chad consulate nor a Moravian one: not enough Chads or Moravians in town to make the cost outlay worthwhile. We used to have what passed for a Swedish consulate down at the Volvo dealership, but the car salesman/diplomat moved to Oregon after suffering through his first one-hundred-and-fifteen-degree Scottsdale summer.
“I’ll call the Ethiopian consulate in New York, Mr. Tesema, and see what they can do for you. And I’ll…” I would what? Make sure his wife and children were fed? “I’ll talk to someone about her situation and find out how much she needs…” I trailed off. Why was talking about money so embarrassing?
Not for Tesema. “She need my money. I get paycheck yesterday but not wire home before police arrest me. Paycheck in my room, on dresser. It already signed. Roommates show you where I keep. You cash and send to her, but not to tell her I in jail. That make her worry.”
“I can’t cash your check!”
“Then my babies starve.”
Getting my hands on his check might be more of a problem than Tesema realized, since the police had probably sealed off his room during their search for evidence. It was a good thing I still had contacts at Scottsdale PD. With a growing sense of unease, I took down the address of Tesema’s apartment, where he lived with three other Ethiopian nationals, as well as instructions on how to wire money to his wife in Addis Ababa. “Write a note authorizing me to act on your behalf and I’ll see what I can do.”
“That mean I your client now?”
I fought off the impulse to pull out my hair. With Jimmy leaving, I needed clients with money, not sad stories. But then the woman down the corridor started up again, screaming that I-loved-him-more-than-your-lazy-ass-and-he-was-bigger-than-you-anyway, and for some reason, when I opened my mouth to tell Tesema no, the word that emerged was, “Yes.”
His gloom vanished and he gave me a blinding smile. “You an OK woman.”
First he’d called me blessed, now I was just OK. At least he was becoming more realistic.
***
Upon my arrival back at Desert Investigations, I called Reverend Melvin Giblin, my ninth or tenth foster father—I’d had so many during my childhood I’d lost count—and after the usual how-are-you’s, told him about Tesema’s situation and his family’s needs. As soon as the Rev promised to look into the matter, I thanked him and rang off. Then, switching over to the Beth Osmon/Jack Sherwood case, I phoned Hertz and reserved a BMW for tomorrow, a Lexus for the next day. That accomplished, I punched in the number for Scottsdale PD and left a message on Captain Kryzinski’s voice mail. Then I stared at my partner’s back and tried to figure out what I could say to keep him from leaving me.
To my relief, Kryzinski returned my call immediately and asked me to come to the station. Happy to escape from the tension in my own office, I jumped into my Jeep and headed up Hayden Road for Scottsdale North.
T. S. Eliot might have said April was the cruelest month, but he didn’t live here. For us desert rats, April is by far the kindest month, the last breezy, balmy time before the temperature began its inexorable climb into triple digits. In appreciation of this perfect day, I had stripped off the Jeep’s bikini top and drove no more than ten miles over the speed limit. The landscaping bracketing Hayden Road was a riot of color, with pink oleander blooming alongside Mojave goldenbush. Sage and honeysuckle scented the air, which was only slightly tainted by the exhaust of the big, fat Hummer ahead of me which bore the bumper sticker, admit it—you’re jealous.
Fighting down the urge to ram the Hummer, I concentrated on the problem at hand, which was to pump as much information as possible out of Kryzinski. Perhaps he would tell me why his detectives zeroed in on Tesema so soon, ignoring Mrs. Hillman’s statement about a big-bazookaed redhead.
By the time I arrived at Scottsdale North, I had inhaled enough carbon monoxide to make me queasy so I did little more than wave to the officer at the front desk, an old friend. He buzzed me through and I rode the elevator up to the third floor, where Captain Kryzinski sat in his glassed-in office, wearing a gray suit as subdued as his face. The new police chief had swept the department clean of all expressions of style or originality, such as the Western-cut suits Kryzinski had once flaunted, and I knew that most of the cops were unhappy with the changes. So I paid little attention to Kryzinski’s dour expression.
I didn’t bother with the basic pleasantries, but started right in, careful to keep my voice down so that passing brass couldn’t hear me. “Okay, so Rada Tesema lied about his whereabouts. Big deal. What makes you think he’s a good candidate for the Ernst murder? Why not Ms. Big Tits? You know, the silicone sister who showed up in the middle of the night and screamed the house down?”
Usually Kryzinski kept his voice low, too, but not today. As if unconcerned who heard him, he fairly boomed his answers. “You must be talking about MaryEllen Bollinger, that’s B-O-L-L-I-N-G-E-R, lives in Scottsdale at 8175 East El Cordobes, Unit 220-A. For starters, her alibi’s a lot tighter than Tesema’s. At the time Ernst was getting his brains bashed in, she caught a speeding ticket way the hell up in Anthem, that planned-up-the-ass community off I-17, where she was headed to see her boyfriend. The DPS officer who wrote her up said she didn’t have a speck of blood anywhere on her, and considering the way she was dressed, he could see pretty much everything. Oh, and we found a neighbor—not your adorable Mrs. Hillman—who heard Ernst yelling at her when she ran back out to her car and took off like a bat out of hell. So he was still alive when she left.”
“Who is this neighbor?”
“Guy on the other side of Ernst’s house. A deacon in the Scottsdale Baptist Chuch.”
I bared my teeth at him. “And deacons never lie.”
“Don’t start. But your friend Tesema? He’s a whole different story. First, our same witness saw that old blue car of his pull into Ernst’s driveway not long after Ms. Bollinger left. And regardless of what Tesema may have told you, he spent a good deal of time in the house, too. Secondly, we matched Tesema’s shoes to some bloody footprints in Ernst’s bedroom. That and the kitchen both looked like they had been ransacked. And guess whose bloody fingerprints we found on all the drawers?”
He didn’t give me time to answer. “Your precious Mr. Tesema’s, that’s whose. Thirdly, MaryEllen Bollinger, the ‘silicon sister’ you’re so snippy about, wasn’t the only person known to have had a screaming fight with Ernst. Our witness told the detectives that Tesema and Ernst went at it a couple of days ago, too, with Ernst yelling ‘You Schwarzer’ this and ‘You Schwarzer’ that.”
“Schwarzer?” I knew what it meant but wanted to see how he’d say it.
Kryzinski’s face twisted in distaste. “The German equivalent of the ‘N’ word. Nice guy, your Mr. Ernst. Anyway, according to the neighbor, Mr. Tesema didn’t take the insult kindly and yelled back something to the effect that if Ernst kept using the ‘S’ word, he, Tesema, that is, would cut out Ernst’s tongue and feed it to the jackals. I guess he hasn’t been here long enough to learn that we don’t have jackals, just pit bulls and coyotes.”
“That’s one bright spot for my guy, then. Ernst was beaten to death, not cut.”
“Maybe Tesema was so pissed off he didn’t bother to choose the right cutlery.”
It was my turn to scowl. “You’re saying he was in too big a hurry to grab a knife, but took time to gag and hogtie his victim?”
“C’mon, Lena. You know as well as I do that most murderers are irrational, otherwise they’d figure some way out of their problem that doesn’t entail prison time.”
True, but Tesema had never struck me as irrational, just a stranger in a strange land. Yet his behavior when he discovered Ernst’s body was troublesome. Why had he gone through Ernst’s drawers? I didn’t want to believe he was a thief, but with a whole family to feed back home, he might have been tempted to supplement his Loving Care paycheck by a little pilfering. And if the unforgiving Ernst caught him…“Was anything missing from Ernst’s house? Money? Jewelry? Credit cards?”
Kryzinski shook his head. “Not that we know of. His wallet was still in his pants, along with a full complement of plastic and forty-two dollars in cash. As to jewelry, he was wearing a watch and one ring, a clunky-looking thing with an Iron Cross. Before you ask, we didn’t find a cache of diamonds and rubies anywhere, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have them and that they weren’t stolen.”
“Just because Tesema’s prints were all over the house doesn’t mean he was the person who tossed the place.”
A chuckle from Kryzinski. “Maybe it was elves.”
“Why would Tesema steal from his employer? If caught, he’d lose his job.” The minute the question was out of my mouth, I realized how silly it sounded. It wasn’t all that unusual for hired help to filch from employers they hated.
But Kryzinski took the question seriously. “Tesema admitted that Ernst had cut back on his hours, so maybe he felt he had nothing to lose.”
I raised my eyebrows. Ernst had cut back on his care-giver’s hours? It didn’t seem sensible to me that an elderly amputee wouldn’t take advantage of all the health care he could afford. Ernst wasn’t poverty-stricken, because his house, while not quite Architectural Digest cover material, was stuffed with the standard Scottsdale luxuries. On my way into the kitchen, I’d seen a Bose stereo system, a big-screen plasma TV, and a salt-water aquarium that took up most of one wall. Even the car Ernst no longer drove, yet which remained parked in his garage for Tesema to chauffeur him around in, was upscale: a Mercedes-Benz S Class retrofitted for hand controls, about ten years old.
Since there was nothing else to learn, Kryzinski and I spent the next few minutes commiserating over what had happened to the Arizona Diamondbacks, but the team’s fall from grace didn’t seem to bother him as much as it did me. Which was odd, because he was the bigger fan. In fact, nothing much did seem to interest him, not even my news that his favorite Western wear shop had gone out of business. “You feeling all right, Captain?” His ruddy complexion was wan, and he’d lost weight. And all that gray hair…
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“I’ve just got a lot on my mind these days. Look, I’m due at a meeting in just a couple of minutes, so if you’re done…”
“I can take a hint.” Before leaving, I showed him the note Tesema had written granting me permission to retrieve his paycheck. After a phone call to smooth my way, he said, “The detectives have finished going over Tesema’s room. I advise picking up his check as soon as possible. After that, you never know. I might not always be here to run interference.”
I started to ask what he’d meant by that, but before I could, he hustled me out the door and closed it between us.
***
Tesema’s apartment was in Mesa, a city of approximately a half-million people. To get there from Scottsdale, you have two choices: the always crowded freeway or down Pima Road to McDowell, the recently widened six-lane highway through the narrow end of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation. The day being so beautiful, I opted for the latter.
Although the reservation did not share Scottsdale’s manicured elegance, the wild, wide-open spaces were a respite from the city’s ever-increasing skyline. Thanks to the casinos that opened several years back, the Pima Indians, whose fortunes hovered near the poverty line for decades, were enjoying boom times. Houses had replaced the old shacks, and new pickup trucks sat in their driveways. The raven-haired children who played in front of the day care center wore new clothing emblazoned with the logos of rap groups and action film stars, but horses still grazed under the mesquite trees and wild javelina still drank from the irrigation canals. There was little traffic along McDowell other than a few gravel trucks from the local quarries. Once, out of habit, I mistakenly took the dirt turn-off toward Jimmy’s trailer, the one he’d bought when he moved back from Utah five years earlier in search of his Native American roots. I realized my error as I pulled into the gravel drive.
I had always liked Jimmy’s trailer, an old Airstream. His uncle, who owned a body shop, had decorated its exterior with paintings of Earth Doctor, the father-god who had created the world and everything in it; and his adversary, Elder Brother, from whom he’d fled into a labyrinth beneath the earth. Between them, Spider Woman tried to make peace. Strife was a constant, the trailer told me. In your time here, walk gently upon the earth, respect the animals, and leave your descendants a name that can be spoken with pride.
In the back, rooting around the prayer lodge Jimmy had constructed out of mesquite branches and native grasses, were a javelina sow and her three piglets. I watched them for a while, enjoying the wind as it swept across the mesquite-dappled fields, listening to the piglets’ grunts as they dug in the soil for tasty roots. When the little family finally moved away, annoyed by the two laughing Pima teenagers who galloped their horses through the brush toward them, I turned the Jeep around.
How could Jimmy could abandon such riches?
***
The Ethiopians lived near the Mormon Temple in a one-bedroom apartment so decrepit it should have been condemned. The walls looked like they hadn’t been painted since Ernst was a U-boat captain, but layers of paint still managed to cement the windows shut so that the small living room was hot and stuffy. Cheap linoleum designed to look like bricks covered the floor, but was so thin in some areas you could see the black backing. The few pieces of furniture were limited to a wobbly kitchen table and chairs, and a ratty brown sofa the men had probably recycled from a nearby alley. The apartment wasn’t completely bleak. Rada and his roommates had livened up the place by thumb-tacking brightly colored African folk art posters on one wall and several hand-carved crosses to the other.
A man introducing himself as Goula Hadaradi, the only Ethiopian not yet at work, greeted me with a polite gravity. After I showed him Rada’s note, he led me into a tiny bedroom and gestured toward the bottom level of one of the two bunk beds. “This where Rada sleep.” Then he tapped on a plastic storage container pushed against the opposite wall. “This where he keep clothing.” He crossed the room to a scuffed chest and opened one of the drawers. “This is drawer for his papers. When police take him, I put paycheck here, keep safe.” Before handing the check over, he read Rada’s note again. “Yes, he says to give to you. That Rada’s signing, I recognize from back of check. So I give. But you send to wife. She need.”
The passion in his voice hinted of yet another family left behind, so I assured him I would wire the money to Addis Ababa immediately. “By the way, Mr. Hadaradi, why didn’t Rada bring his family with him when he immigrated?”
Hadaradi looked away for a brief moment, but not before I saw sadness slip over his face. “Like rest of us, Rada only have money for one person to come. Before coming, we all move families from north, where is still fighting, and now we save up to bring families over.”
“Fighting?”
Anger replaced sadness. “Is big war over border. Many die. My father, my uncle, two brothers, all dead. Like Rada’s father and brothers.”
I vaguely remembered a CNN report about Ethiopia’s border war with Eritrea. Not being personally affected by other than a brief stab of pity for everyone concerned, it had then slipped from my mind. “You guys are political refugees?”
“U.S. not worry about our war. We win lottery for green cards. Now all make big money. Can afford to bring family soon, be happy. Family is life. Without family, life is nothing.”
Not being able to remember my own family, I wouldn’t know. But “big money”? Judging from the looks of the Ethiopians’ apartment, they didn’t even make medium money, and what little they did, they never spent on themselves. But that’s the immigrant life. Years of toil and sacrifice for their children, who, when they grew up, were ashamed of their parents’ accents. I wondered about my own family and what they might have sacrificed for me. But whatever they had done or not done was blurred forever behind the scar tissue on my forehead. My parents only emerged at night, in pieces of memory-nightmares.
I wondered if all the Ethiopians had immigrated together. “Mr. Hadaradi, did you know Rada in Addis Ababa?”
“No. I come here two years ago from little village to south. Rada comes later. I meet him at Ethiopian Church, at what they call Social Evening. Rada not go to church but that OK.”
“I didn’t know there was an Ethiopian church in Mesa.”
Hadaradi shook his head. “Phoenix. I think we are only Ethiopians in Mesa. Some Sudanese here, some Somalians. Many Mormons.” He gave me his first smile.
I appreciated his attempt at levity, but needed to find out what, if anything, Tesema had said to his roommates about Ernst. “When Rada…”
He interrupted me by taking keys out of his pocket and walking toward the door. “No time. I only home to watch policemen look around, keep our things safe. Now I due at other job.”
“Other job?”
“Need three. All of us, even Rada. He help take care of four people. Almost never sleep. You go now, please. Have to lock apartment.”
Unlike Tesema, Hadaradi didn’t have a car, so I dropped him off in front of the Burger King where he worked. From there, I went to Tesema’s bank, where a bank officer helped me through the laborious process of international wire transfers. Good deed accomplished, I drove back to Desert Investigations, thinking hard all the way. Four clients and little sleep. I wondered how irritable I might feel if I were exhausted, yet had to care for so many people, one of them a foul-mouthed U-boat captain.
Irritable enough to commit murder?
***
At five, I pronounced Desert Investigations closed for the day. After a few final taps on his keyboard, Jimmy headed out to spend the evening with his fiancée, leaving me to lock up. This accomplished, I clenched my teeth and climbed the stairs to my apartment.
“No problem, no problem,” I muttered, as with my snub-nosed .38 drawn and ready, I unlocked my triple-locks, let myself in, triple-locked the door behind me, and began my routine search for an intruder. So much for therapy. But as Dr. Gomez had so astutely pointed out, a few months of court-ordered anger management couldn’t erase a childhood filled with abuse. And they did nothing to soften the memory of the foster father who had hidden himself in my bedroom closet, the better to rape me when I arrived home from school.
I’d been nine years old at the time.
My search revealed no rapist in any of the closets. No rapist under the bed. No rapist hiding in the bathroom or the kitchen cupboards. Relieved, I put my .38 down on the clothes hamper, stripped, and showered. Thirty minutes later, after scrubbing my skin raw, I still felt dirty.
Warren arrived promptly at seven, not the least taken aback that I eyed him for a long time through the peephole before beginning the complicated unlocking process.
“You look beautiful,” he said, stepping into the apartment. “I’ve never seen you in a dress before.”
Although I’d purchased my all-purpose black dress off the sale rack at Robinson’s-May, Warren’s Armani suit had a loftier pedigree and his aftershave probably cost more than the dress. “You look beautiful, too.”
He glanced around the living room. “Did you just move in?”
“About four years ago, but I’m not much on decorating.” An understatement if there ever was one. The room was basic, since the only items I had added after leasing it fully furnished were a Kachina doll, a Navajo rug, a couple of toss pillows, and an oil painting done by an Apache artist. Seeing the apartment through Warren’s eyes—and remembering Jimmy’s colorful trailer—I realized my home sweet home had the personality of a motel room.
Outside in the rapidly cooling spring air—did I smell magnolia blossoms, already?—Warren helped me into the passenger seat of his leased Land Rover as though I were some frail creature who couldn’t manage the climb, and I didn’t know whether to be charmed or insulted. I decided on charmed. “Where are we going?” Someplace dark, I hoped, where no one I knew would see us in case dinner ended badly.
He pulled away from the curb and headed off into the night. “How about that three-star restaurant at the Phoenician?”
The chance of my not being recognized at one of the city’s premiere resorts was slim. Not only was I on a first-name basis with the maître d’ because I’d once helped him find his runaway daughter, but I would probably also know half the diners, too. In these litigious days, private detectives get around. But Warren was trying to make an impression, so I tried not to let my disappointment show. “That’s nice.”
Stopping at a crosswalk, where a gaggle of Bermuda shorts-wearing tourists were crossing, he gave me a look. “Too public? Then you recommend a place.”
He could read moods, a good sign. A man who paid attention to people. Relieved, I directed him to Pasta Brioni, a nice little Italian restaurant tucked discreetly into a shopping center. The place was quiet, dimly lit, and the owner/chef served original dishes rivaling the Phoenician’s. Best of all, the clientele didn’t blab.
The evening wasn’t as uncomfortable as I had feared. Not at first, anyway. It was refreshing to sit in a romantic restaurant with a handsome man again, pleasant to be asked what I suggested on the menu, and a relief not to monitor my date’s alcohol intake. Although Warren ordered a glass of white wine, he never touched it. I, as usual, ordered tea. In between bites of his chicken piccata, he told me about Jaheese, the Arab mare he stabled in an equestrian complex near Griffith Park, and I told him about Lady, the bay mare I kept in Cave Creek. We made tentative plans to go riding together sometime, but I doubted either of us would follow through. When his schedule lightened, he’d be gone. And why take a flight to Los Angeles just to go horseback riding in Griffith Park?
Then he told me about his classic car collection, which he’d started when his father gave him a 1937 Buick sedan for his sixteenth birthday. “It was midnight black and looked like something that Al Capone would drive. Man, I felt tough in that thing! It scared the crap out of all the kids at Hollywood High.”
Most of the rich kids in Scottsdale got Beemers for their birthdays, so I had to applaud his father’s creativity. The Buick was probably safer for a teenager than a snot-nosed import, too. “Your dad must be an unusual guy.”
“You could say that.” He looked over to the bar, where despite my assertion that Pasta Brioni was a quiet place, one of the bartenders had just launched into a surprisingly good rendition of One for My Baby, backed by a customer on the piano. When the bartender finished, he got a big round of applause, then everyone went back to eating.
Warren picked up where he’d left off. “And for my eighteenth birthday, I got a 1959 Edsel Ranger. Turd brown, butt ugly, and in terrible condition, but by then I’d learned enough to restore it myself.”
“Um, tell me about your dad.” Not having one of my own, I always liked hearing about other peoples’ families. “And your mom. What was it like growing up in Hollywood? Were your folks in the business?”
When he smiled, he looked like a California beach boy. The restaurant’s warm lighting erased the lines at the corner of his eyes, and softened the creases that ran from the corner of his mouth to his almost too-perfect nose. “Let’s talk about you, instead. I notice that you don’t drink.”
Talk about a segue.
But there was no point in being secretive about my background—most of it had aired on the local news a year earlier when I solved a high-profile murder case—so I gave him the same sanitized version I gave everyone, leaving out the beatings and rapes. “Since I don’t know who my parents are, I don’t know what kind of addictive genes I might be carrying around. So I don’t indulge.”
He put his fork down. “Let me get this straight. You can’t remember who your parents are, why you were shot, or who shot you?”
I smiled, shook my head, and shoveled more Shrimp Brioni into my mouth. “Nothing before the age of four.” A small lie there. I remembered the bus I was riding in just before I was shot, the gun itself, a red-headed man standing in a forest clearing. But those things I only discussed with Dr. Gomez.
Warren looked down at his chicken piccata, then said something unexpected. “If you ask me, memory can be overrated.”
In light of some of my memories, I agreed with him. But I was determined to keep the conversation as light as possible. “Hey, everything turned out fine. I received a scholarship to ASU, became a police officer, and when I left the Force, opened Desert Investigations.” I left out the part where I’d been shot in a drug raid. “Now I’m working for a famous Hollywood director! Lots of foster kids do worse.” Most of them, in fact. A study I once read revealed that only one of five ex-foster kids were mentally healthy and/or regularly employed. Few graduated from high school, went on to college, or led lives that could be considered remotely normal. The rehab clinics and prisons teemed with my less fortunate brethren. I left that part out, too.
When he looked back up at me, his expression was puzzling. There was gentleness around his mouth, but his blue eyes had darkened with an emotion I couldn’t readily identify. “Jesus, Lena. You’ve managed to accomplish so much with so little, while I…never mind. My films should tell you all you need to know about me. The part that matters, anyway.”
Then he smiled again and the darkness in his eyes lifted. His tone became flirtatious. “Do you know why I decided I had to know you better?”
I flirted right back, in my own PI kind of way. “Because I made you sign a two-month contract instead of a day-to-day agreement?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Now that was a dart from Cupid! But, no. That’s not the reason. The very second you pulled onto the set with that ’45 Jeep I knew you were the woman for me.”
I didn’t know whether to be thrilled or to run like hell. But when he leaned over and give me a quick kiss on the cheek, I didn’t flinch. Yes, I was making progress. So much so that for the rest of the evening I was able to push all my worries away, including those about Rada Tesema and Beth Osmon.
As a wise man once said, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.