When I was four years old, an undocumented Mexican national found me lying unconscious by the side of a Phoenix street, a bullet in my head. She carried me to the nearest emergency room, then dashed back out into the night.
I survived the coma, but the bullet left only an empty space where my childhood memories should have been. Mother, father—their names and my own—were as lost to me as the blood that had seeped into the Phoenix pavement. In dreams, sometimes, I could hear the singing of a dozen voices, understood that I was a passenger on a brightly lit bus hurtling through the night. The songs always ended in gunshots and pain.
Who am I? I don’t know and possibly never will. My true name and the reason I was a passenger on that bus remain mysteries. But of the identity of the woman sitting next to me, the woman aiming the gun at me, there can be no mistake. She looked then as I do now.
My mother.
When I recovered from my coma, Child Protective Services sent me off to a series of foster homes that I endured until my eighteenth birthday and my entrance as a scholarship student into the criminal justice program at Arizona State University.
If you’re a gambling person, you can lay odds that most foster homes are semi-adequate places to warehouse bereft children. Most of these people mean well, and they do everything possible to quell the fears of their tiny wards. Some, however, are lured into the program only to get the check that arrives every month. If their foster children are lucky, they are simply ignored. If they’re not lucky.…Well, things happen in foster care. Things that sometimes make the newspapers.
This much I can tell you about my own luck: I hadn’t reached Reverend Melvin Giblin’s foster home soon enough.
As soon as I exited the jail and climbed back into my Jeep, I fished a pad and pen out of my carry-all and jotted down the other names Owen had given me. That accomplished, I punched the Rev’s number into my cell phone.
After three rings, the answering machine picked up and I heard the Rev’s warm baritone. “Sorry you missed me, but I’m attending the Southwest Book Publishers Association Expo at Desert Shadows Resort. Starting Friday, I’ll be manning SOBOP’s sales booth at the Festival of the West, at WestWorld. If it’s an emergency, you can call my cell phone at (602) 555-5550. And always remember, Jesus loves you.”
After the beep, I didn’t leave a message. I just started the Jeep and headed north.
***
WestWorld occupies what used to be empty desert and a few Arabian horse farms. Now the horse farms were gone, and so, almost, was the surrounding desert.
The massive equestrian complex hosted roping contests, rodeos, polo matches, Western trade shows, and once a year, the Festival of the West. The festival was attended by tens of thousands of folks, both locals and tourists, all eager to gawk at a few bored bison and perhaps even meet a real live tobacco-spitting cowboy or two. For added excitement, the Overland Stage, pulled by teams of wooly-footed Clydesdales, offered rides to the kiddies, and local actors reenacted the Gunfight at the OK Corral for the millionth time. Because of the money to be made with Western nostalgia, anyone who ran a remotely Western-themed business rented a booth at the festival, so it wasn’t surprising that the Southwest Book Publishers Association had signed up, too.
Upon entering WestWorld’s grounds, I aimed the Jeep toward an empty slot next to a similarly battered pickup truck, but I couldn’t help noticing the rows and rows of yuppymobiles pretending to be work vehicles. As I rolled past a silver Hummer which had obviously never even seen a dirt road, much less a battlefield, I could almost feel the Jeep sneer.
Once parked, I followed a gaggle of tourists toward the festival entrance, situated midway between two large exhibit halls. A sign over the gate informed me that those who arrived in Western wear got in free, which explained the profusion of Yves St. Laurent cowboys surrounding me. I was clad in my usual black jeans and T-shirt, so the ticket-taker, an overly made-up woman dressed like a nineteenth-century hooker, made me fork over the entrance fee. After I’d given her five dollars, I asked for a receipt, at which point she whipped a Cross pen out of her SuperBra and scrawled one. She added a smiley face wearing a cowboy hat at the bottom.
“Have fun, cowgirl,” she said.
I tipped an imaginary cowboy hat and entered the nearest hall. Facing me was a maze of stalls offering hand-tooled cowboy boots, Indian baskets, turquoise jewelry, and gaudy paintings of saguaro-sprinkled sunsets. I wandered among them until I found myself in front of a long, book-strewn table flanked by several tall bookcases. A banner draped over the booth declared, SOUTHWEST BOOK PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION—WE WRITE THE WEST.
“Lena!” Before I could step back, a big man detached himself from the other people manning the table and enveloped me in his arms. “What’s it been, girl, three months, four?”
I tried not to pull back too quickly. It wasn’t Reverend Giblin’s fault that I hated to be touched. In my two years with him, he and his wife had been nothing but kind. But when Mrs. Giblin suffered a fatal stroke, Child Protective Services removed me and the other foster kids from his home. The next family CPS placed me with wasn’t half as kind, although they took care never to let their “discipline” show on one of those rare occasions when a social worker dropped by. By the time CPS realized their mistake and moved me to the next home, I had developed malnutrition along with several hairline fractures.
Bearing up as well as I could at the unwelcome physical contact, I gave the Rev a quick peck on the cheek. “It’s great to see you, too, but I need to warn you that I’m here on business.”
The Rev let his arms fall and stepped back. Other than a few new wrinkles and a hardly perceptible softening of his jaw line, he looked pretty much like he had when I’d lived with him twenty-five years earlier. Silver now blended with the wild black hair he’d never been able to tame. The deep crow’s feet framing his bright blue eyes merely added to their friendliness. His plaid polyester shirt and slacks looked like they’d been bought at a Salvation Army clearance sale—they probably had—and his rough-out cowboy boots could have used a good cleaning. He had packed on a few pounds, too. Judging from the big silver and turquoise belt buckle (a gift from me) which called attention to his newly plump belly, those pounds didn’t embarrass him one bit. The Rev distrusted vanity, believing it to be one of Satan’s many lures.
And yet he had always taken great care to compliment me on my own appearance, perhaps because as a child I’d been so self-conscious about my scar. My foster father may have held strong fundamentalist beliefs, but he never let them conflict with his fundamental kindness.
“Business, Lena? Don’t tell me you’re investigating Gloriana Alden-Taylor’s death.” His voice took on a note of caution.
“Owen’s been arrested for her murder, Rev. That means I have to ask why you went along on that Oak Creek hike when I know you’ve been up there many times before. With me and your other foster kids, as a matter of fact.”
He didn’t answer right away, and during his silence, I became aware of the crowd surrounding us.
A woman with a well-bred Boston accent complained about the dearth of histories on women who’d helped settle the West. “Those miners and cowboys had to marry somebody, didn’t they? Well, where are their wives? Where are their contributions? Why aren’t women even mentioned in any of these books? Why is it always just men, men, men?”
Nearby, an elderly man grumped that he’d found eighteen typos in the first chapter of the book he’d bought from the SOBOP booth the day before. “Slipshod editing, young man. When I was your age, books came without mistakes like these.”
But still the Rev said nothing, and his long silence began to worry me. After all, he had been on the hike and must have seen the water hemlock himself. Why was he so loathe to talk about it?
“Rev.…”
“Yes, I remember taking you kids up to Oak Creek,” he finally answered, his eyes no more eager to meet mine than Owen’s had been. “It’s beautiful up there, all that red rock. Even now, I grasp at any chance to go back again. And then there are the memories. You, Brian, Malik.…”
Before he could finish recounting those few happy days of my childhood, an elderly woman wearing a purple Stetson and matching ostrich cowboy boots tapped him on the shoulder.
“I need God’s magnificent love,” she said.
So did I, but it wouldn’t occur to me to go around asking for it.
The Rev merely smiled. “It’s on special today for only $12.98.” Then, when he saw my face, he began to laugh. “God’s Magnificent Love was my first book and so far, it’s been my best seller.”
He dug into his pocket and made change for a twenty, then stepped back to the table and picked up a slim volume. “Want me to autograph it for you?” After the woman nodded, he scribbled something onto the title page, then handed it to her. “Enjoy. And remember, Jesus loves you,” he said, as she trundled off, her feet obviously hurting.
The Rev motioned toward the bookshelves surrounding the table, and for the first time, I noticed his name on several books. God’s Magnificent Love. God’s Magnificent Mercy. God’s Magnificent Justice.
“Why, Rev, you’ve been keeping secrets from me. You told me you’d gone into publishing, but I didn’t know you were publishing your own books.”
“Only a few of the books are mine at this point. That’s the way a lot of small presses get started. You write a book but can’t find a publisher, so you publish it yourself. Maybe it doesn’t do very well, but that’s neither here nor there because you’ve scratched an itch by only spending a couple of thousand dollars. Sometimes, though, you make a profit. Then a friend who’s just finished his manuscript asks you to show him the publishing ropes, and you do. Then someone else asks. The next time it happens, you start thinking, ‘Why don’t I just publish these things myself?’
“There you are, the story of God’s Love Press. We have twenty-four titles now, with three more due out next month. Most of the manuscripts come from other ministers around the country, but I’m still throwing a few of my own into the mix.”
His smile dimmed for a moment. “Religious publishing houses are seeing a big increase in business these days. People need hope more now than ever before.”
While I was no longer an atheist (a near-death experience in the desert had ended that)1 the Rev’s simple faith still made me uncomfortable. I hurried to change the subject. “Let’s get back to Gloriana’s murder, Rev. I need to interview everyone who sat near her at the banquet last night, and that includes you.”
An unfathomable look. “I wasn’t the only one there, you know.” He glanced over at the SOBOP sales table. It was manned at one end by a yuppie-slick Asian, the counter card in front of him reading ARIZONA TRAILS PUBLISHING. In the middle of the table, behind a counter card that said VERDAD PRESS, sat a distinguished-looking Hispanic gentleman whose face seemed vaguely familiar.
Holding down the other end of the table, as far away from those two as was possible in the cramped area, sat another familiar face. A blond man in his forties, who—judging from his expression as he eyed his table mates—appeared unlikely to break out in a chorus of Kumbayah. The book displayed in front of him was titled Losing America.
The notorious Randall Ott.
With dismay, I saw the long line of people, all Anglos, waiting to have their books autographed by Ott. I also noted that his counter card proclaimed PATRIOT’S BLOOD PRESS. Considering everything I’d learned so far, I wasn’t surprised to discover he was one of Gloriana’s authors. His Whites-only views on immigration alone would have warmed her cold heart. He had gone on the fatal hike, too. Could he have been having—I hoped, I hoped—publisher troubles? I’d love to nail him for her murder.
The Rev ignored Ott’s glower and waved. Ott didn’t wave back. Was the Rev’s hair too dark for Ott? Suspiciously curly? The Rev appeared not to notice the snub. “Tell you what, Lena. A few of us are breaking for lunch in a few minutes, so why don’t you talk to us all at the same time?”
“Try to bring Ott along, too.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I’ll try, but he’s…well, let’s just say he marches to his own drummer.”
A big White drum with a military beat. Ott wouldn’t be satisfied until Arizona and the rest of America were lily-white, and if it took a few armed encounters to bring that about, he proclaimed himself up for it. Word on the desert pipeline was that he had already begun amassing the arsenal.
While I much preferred talking to each of the SOBOP people separately, an immediate solo interview with each was not that critical. There was an up side to interviewing them together. Lulled by their associates’ presence, they might be off guard, thus possibly more truthful. Satisfied, I arranged to meet the Rev and the others outside, at the picnic table closest to the Pima fry bread stand.
Before I left the exhibit hall, I browsed through some of SOBOP’s books, finally choosing Arizona Flora and Fauna from Arizona Trails Publishing and History of Arizona’s Yaqui Indians from Verdad Press. I purchased nothing from Patriot’s Blood, but did take note of Gloriana’s offerings. Marriage or Miscegenation? Finding Your Patriot Ancestors through DNA Testing. Recreational Explosives and How to Build Them.
Recreational explosives? God save our crazy state.
More curious than ever, I picked up a Patriot’s Blood brochure, stepped to a less crowded area of the tent, and began reading.
Thank you for your interest in Patriot’s Blood Press. We were founded as Patriot’s Blood Magazine on the very day of America’s Bicentennial—July 4, 1976—by Mayflower descendant Gloriana Alden-Taylor. At that time, we specialized in articles on the Revolutionary War. Eventually, our magazine branched out to include other conflicts: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, Panama, the World Wars, and of course, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Anywhere a patriot’s blood has been shed.
Several years ago we expanded into book publishing. Our first title, The American Triumph, earned national attention when Strom Thurmond quoted its passages on the floor of the U.S. Senate. And now, yet another best-selling book adds to our ever-growing reputation.
Losing America, by historian/journalist Randall Ott, rocketed to the number one spot on the New York Times best seller list and remained there for fifteen weeks straight. A full year since its printing, the book remains in the top ten.
Ott’s message is an important one. He believes that for America to regain its former stature in the world politic, we must stop all immigration into the U.S., especially that of Arabs, Africans, and Asians. Under certain strict guidelines, he recommends a program which will allow limited immigration of healthy, college-educated Northern Europeans.
While Mr. Ott’s views are not necessarily the views of the editors at Patriot’s Blood, we do applaud his courage to speak out in a time when political correctness has all but silenced dissent.
Join us. Subscribe to Patriot’s Blood Magazine today, then begin building your own personal library of Patriot’s Blood titles. By doing so, you will help restore America to her former glory.
America needs her patriots now more than ever.
The signature below, in a spidery yet elegant script, was that of Gloriana Alden-Taylor.
I looked up from the brochure and stared across the exhibition hall at Ott, who was preening as a fan pointed excitedly to one of Losing America’s pages. An Anglo fan, of course; the book has always been less popular with readers of color. It was especially popular with the vigilante groups that had sprung up along the border Arizona shared with Mexico. An underlined copy had been found in the backpack of one “patriot” sharpshooter who had shot and killed a twelve-year-old Mexican girl trying to get into the U.S. with her mother.
Stuffing the brochure into my carry-all, I headed toward the exhibit hall’s rear exit and soon found myself at the top of an artificial berm that sloped gently to the Old West Encampment.
Below me, in a manmade valley, sprawled a motley panorama of faux prairie schooners, faux tepees, faux wickiups, faux hogans, and faux log cabins. A few real Indians—mainly Pima, Navajo and Apache, wearing cynical smiles on their faces—strolled along in tribal dress. When I reached them, I saw they were handing out fliers inviting everyone to their next pow-wow. Cowboys, some of them actually real, did likewise. In the cowboys’ case, however, the brochures hyped local dude ranches and city-slicker cattle drives. Near a deeply banked campfire stood a chaps-wearing cowboy poet I recognized as “Chaps” Peterson. His repertoire included poems about starlit nights, lonely trails, mean broncs, and unfaithful saloon gals. The freshening wind (rain tomorrow?) carried snatches of his current presentation.
Left my sweet lil’ Sal back home,
Been ridin’ the trail seven months and a day.
While I been gone, ol’ Lonesome John
Done honeyed my Sal and took her away.
It was all phoney as hell, but who cared? The true West was no longer available except in old men’s dreams, and the more the cities closed in, the more we needed the dream. While it might be pretty to imagine an Arizona unblemished by housing tracts and satellite dishes, that hope was no more realistic than imagining Manhattan without gridlock. Evolution happens, whether we like it or not.
An actor dressed like Wyatt Earp handed me a flier. “Shoot-out in fifteen minutes, be there or be square. We’re gathering on the other side of the Pima fry bread stand.”
“Where’s that?” I asked Wyatt, remembering that the Rev planned to meet me there. I’ve always been a sucker for fry bread, especially the way the Pimas cook it: hot, puffy, and dripping with wild honey.
I followed Wyatt’s directions to the stand, purchased a half-order, then found a seat at a vacant picnic table and began to eat. Pima honey was dripping down my chin when I heard a familiar voice behind me.
“Baby, I can explain everything.”
Dusty.
Quickly assembling my thoughts, I turned to face a man I’d once thought I loved. “Well, well, look what the bobcat dragged in.”
My insult was no exaggeration. Except for Dusty’s always immaculate dude ranch attire, he did look like something coughed up by Arizona wildlife. His trail-weathered face had taken on a yellow tinge, and his lanky form seemed crumpled in on itself. Red veins streaked the whites around now-faded blue eyes, contrasting garishly with the purple circles beneath. His hands shook, and I suspected not from nerves.
“Lena, why won’t you return my calls?” Even his voice sounded broken.
A few months earlier Dusty had discarded me for another woman, a tourist who’d made a successful play for him at the Happy Trails Dude Ranch where he worked. Still smarting from his betrayal, I wanted to hurt him as badly as he’d hurt me.
“You sure as hell didn’t return my calls when you were off in Vegas with that…that…” I thought hard but couldn’t come up with a better word, “…with that bitch.”
Without invitation, he sat down on my right, his thigh pressed against mine. It was all I could do not to press back. Not that I still cared about him or anything.
“Baby, let me tell you what really happened. She and I.…”
Thigh scalding, I shifted down the bench as far away from him as I could get. “As entertaining as your yarn might be, I’m not interested. Besides, I’m working.”
He narrowed his bloodshot eyes at my fry bread. “It doesn’t look like you’re working.”
I snorted. “There’s a liar at this picnic table, and it sure isn’t me.”
“Please, Lena.…”
To my great relief, I heard Reverend Giblin’s baritone behind me. “Told you it wouldn’t be long, didn’t I, Lena? And great news. David and Emil here have agreed to tell you everything they know.”
I looked past Dusty and saw the Rev flanked by two men I had seen earlier at the SOBOP booth. “That’s wonderful. Let’s get started.”
The Rev, no dummy, raised his eyebrows. “Ah, will Dusty…?”
“The cowboy was just leaving.”
Dusty clenched his jaw, and for a brief moment, I thought he might refuse. But then his dude ranch manners kicked in and he stood up. “I’ll talk to you later, Lena.”
“Not if I see you coming first,” I muttered into the last piece of my fry bread. I wished my heart would quit hurting.
As Dusty stalked off, the Rev gave me a sad look. I knew what he was thinking, that I always managed to screw up my relationships. He was right, too. I didn’t bother to tell him that this time, Dusty rejected me first.
After I was certain my voice wouldn’t tremble, I patted the bench and said, “C’mon, Rev, take a load off.”
Once the Rev introduced me to the Hispanic man, I realized where I’d seen him before. Emil Ramos, the owner of Verdad Press, made the local news broadcasts recently when he got into a spat at the Arizona Capitol with Representative Lynn Tinsley, the sponsor of the English-only bill. During the shouting match, Ramos screamed at Tinsley in five languages; besides the usual English and Spanish, Ramos was also fluent in German, Vietnamese, and Navajo. Responding in the fractured Spanglish she probably used with her maid, Tinsley called Ramos a “wetback.” Ramos, whose family had lived in Arizona several generations longer than Tinsley’s, reminded the congresswoman that if she wanted to return America to its native language, she’d have to learn approximately three hundred Native American dialects. Beside herself with rage, Tinsley then uttered the words that, although they were bleeped out on the local news, ran in their full glory on MTV. “Fuck you, beaner.”
David Zhang, owner of Arizona Trails Publishing, kept a much lower profile. A fourth-generation Arizonan, he, like many other local Asians, descended from the Chinese laborers who built the railroad across the West in the nineteenth century. As Zhang proudly told me, he began his publishing house on the strength of one book, The Iron Highway, which contained selections from his track-laying ancestors’ memoirs.
“My original publishing mission has expanded to include books on scenic areas all over the Southwest,” Zhang finished. “Most of them are the big glossy, coffee-table extravaganzas you see in gift shops, but I also produce smaller, less expensive guides for campers and hikers.”
I told Zhang that besides the book I’d bought a few minutes earlier, I also owned his beautifully photographed seasonal guide to the Grand Canyon. “My boyfriend bought it for me,” I said. Then I remembered. “I mean my ex-boyfriend.”
To forestall any questions, I quickly asked, “Randall Ott couldn’t make it?”
Zhang grimaced. “Captain America’s still signing books for his admirers. Besides, he only mixes with white people. But since you’ve got the prerequisite coloring, he might condescend to talk to you once we’ve left. Just don’t be surprised if he forces you to buy that nasty screed of his in order to get an interview.”
Losing America wasn’t my kind of nightstand reading, but if that’s what it took.… “As long as it’s cheap.”
“Doesn’t get much cheaper,” Zhang said. His tone made me suspect he didn’t mean the book’s price.
To my surprise, the stories the three told dovetailed with Owen Sisiwan’s. The day before the murder, Gloriana had suddenly asked everyone at their dinner table if they’d like to go on a hike at Oak Creek, and—impressed by her good will—the group said yes. They had arrived at Oak Creek around ten in the morning and hiked for a couple of hours. At various points, several people had lagged behind to pick flowers and herbs, only to have Owen confiscate their haul.
“Owen had no patience with that kind of behavior,” the Rev finished up. “He said that as long as they were on state land, they needed to keep their hands to themselves.”
Ramos smiled. “As I remember, he told them if they wanted greenery, to buy it at the resort’s flower shop.”
“How well did you know the other people on the hike?”
He smoothed his silvered hair. “I know of Randall Ott, and his inamorata, Representative Lynn Tinsley. Perhaps the honorable Ms. Tinsley believed that the hemlock she picked would ward off those black helicopters she is so worried about.”
I frowned, not certain that I’d heard right. “Black helicopters?”
Zhang winked at Ramos and grinned at me, flashing the kind of perfect orthodontia you only find in Scottsdale or Beverly Hills. That and his Armani sports coat hinted that Arizona Trails’ books sold well. Or maybe he’d inherited money.
“You haven’t heard about Tinsley’s black helicopters?” Zhang asked. “The only things that worry her more than a child speaking Spanish are the black helicopters she believes are jamming the television signals at her house. Perhaps you haven’t read her magnum opus, The Area 51 Project the Government Doesn’t Want You to Know About. She had ten thousand copies published at her own expense and now she can’t even give them away. So much for her dreams of matching her boyfriend’s publishing success.”
“Not enough hate in her book,” Ramos murmured. “Just fear.”
Frightened people frequently kill, though, so I filed the knowledge away for further consideration. “Who else spent their time picking plants?”
Ramos looked abashed. “I must admit that I was foolish enough to do so. My eye was captured by a purple aster, though, not hemlock. Owen made me give my treasure to him, which served me right for being so thoughtless. Another sinner was Gloriana’s niece, Sandra Alden-Taylor. The woman is a lovely person, of that I am quite sure, but several times, Mr. Sisiwan had to caution her, also, to leave the plant life alone.”
Zhang flashed his teeth again. “Yeah, Sandra seemed determined to shovel half the creek’s flowers into her fanny pack.”
That made several people who couldn’t keep their hands off the plants, even those who should have known better. But I sympathized. The glories of Arizona’s deserts, canyons, and forests could do strange things to people.
I noticed the Rev watching me closely, a worried expression on his face. Was it because of my questioning, or was it something else?
“What?”
“Lena, Owen made everyone hand over what they’d picked. Everyone. He did everything short of frisk us to make sure we didn’t carry even a leaf away.”
Going over everyone’s stories, I began to run the numbers in my mind. “Ott, Tinsley, Gloriana’s niece, you three…that’s only six, plus Owen. Who have I missed?”
The Rev smiled. “Myra Gordon, an acquisitions librarian from Wyatt’s Landing, down near Casa Grande. She was the only one on the hike who is actually staying at the resort. The rest of us here just drive up to the Expo every morning. Anyway, from what she told me, she’s attending SOBOP to find locally published books for the Wyatt’s Landing Public Library. And Zach, Gloriana’s grandson, came along, too. But I can assure you that he didn’t pick a thing. He was right in front of me, and I would have noticed.”
I’d heard such assurances before. They seldom amounted to much. “Zach would have seen the water hemlock and heard Owen’s warning, right?”
The Rev shrugged. “I guess. But he’s a good man, Lena. One of the best.”
Most of the men on Death Row had once been described by someone as “a good man.” Especially by their mothers.
“One final question, Rev. Did any of you see exactly what Owen did after he confiscated the plants?”
“He replanted most of the herbs and flowers, and disposed of the too badly damaged plants in the brush. But he put the hemlock in his jacket pocket.” The Rev’s face looked glum.
Not good. Owen had probably collected enough lethal flora to wipe out the entire Arizona Diamondbacks team, and half the Cardinals to boot.
Then something else occurred to me, something that might help ease the pressure on Owen. “When you all got back to the resort, did you hear anyone talking about the water hemlock?”
Zhang nodded. “Yeah, Randall Ott was pretty ticked that some Indian had dared tell him what to do. I think most people ignored him, though.”
Maybe, and maybe not. For the first time that day I began to feel optimistic about Owen’s prospects. Not only did the hiking party know about the poisonous plant, but so did anyone else who had been on the receiving end of Ott’s complaints. As for the others at SOBOP, I had already noticed that the book I bought from Zhang’s display contained a full-color picture of the plant. The page even carried a bold type warning, in red, which detailed its poisonous parts: namely, all of them. I did a quick mental calculation. Anyone intent on killing Gloriana could drive back up to Oak Creek in under two hours, pick more hemlock, and return to the resort before the salad course was set out in the banquet hall. With the various seminars continuing throughout the day, one person’s absence wouldn’t be noticed. Unless.…
“Did anyone not turn up where he was supposed to? Like on a panel?” I asked the Rev.
The Rev thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”
Means and opportunity enough for everyone then, not just Owen. But what about motive? My early years with the police had taught me that barring the odd serial killer, gang banger action, or sloppier-than-usual robberies, the solution to a murder usually lay in the victim’s own life. All I had to do was find out enough about Gloriana Alden-Taylor to determine who hated the woman enough to kill her.
“You gentlemen have been a great help,” I told the three, reserving my warmest smile for the Rev. “One more question and then I’ll let you get back to your display booth. I only met Gloriana once, so I don’t know much about her. Tell me, what was she really like?”
From the frost that swept over the picnic table, you’d think a glacier had dropped from the skies. None of the men, including the Rev, seemed inclined to answer.
I waited until Emil Ramos, his eyes glittering with hatred, said, “Miss Jones, you want to know what she was like? Then I will tell you. Gloriana Alden-Taylor would disgust the Devil.”