While the Jeep idled at a red light on Indian School Road, I called Zach from my cell phone. When I voiced my concerns about Lavelle, he pointed out that Sandra stopped in to see her mother a couple of times a month.
“She’s never mentioned seeing anything out of the way, Lena, certainly not bruising. You must have caught them on a bad day. Besides, when two people are as close as they are, you have to expect a squabble or two.”
“They didn’t seem all that close to me.” I remembered the punch and Lavelle’s attempt to evade it. Then I wondered if Gloriana had noticed any bruises during her last visit.
Zach’s laugh hissed through the line. “They’re probably too close. That’s why their marriages didn’t work out. Lavelle’s, a late marriage, lasted long enough for her to have Sandra, but Leila’s, same late type of deal, was all over with in a matter of months. They moved in together then and haven’t been apart since.”
The light changed to green and I shifted the Jeep into gear. The traffic heading back to Scottsdale was heavier than usual. Not for the first time I wished the city would install some mass transit other than buses, but no, that made too much sense.
“Lena, is there anything else?” Zach’s voice startled me out of my revery.
“Uh, yeah. While I was at the house, they mentioned warning Gloriana about someone, but I couldn’t get the specifics. Do you know what they were talking about?”
After a moment’s silence, he responded, “I haven’t the slightest idea. Unless maybe they were angry with me. On my last visit, about a month ago, they both seemed to have lost some weight, so I suggested they start thinking about a move to an assisted living facility. When I got to the office the next day, I mentioned my worries to Gloriana, and she said she’d look into it. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. We’ll never know. Now, I have some phone calls to make, authors to disappoint, so.…”
No one can say that Lena Jones can’t take a hint. “Thanks for your time, Zach.”
Feeling dissatisfied with the conversation, I disconnected.
***
Later in the day, Owen Sisiwan stopped by to thank me for the work I was doing on his behalf. Recalling Gloriana’s intimate photographs of him made me uneasy, but I don’t think he noticed.
“I haven’t helped much yet, Owen.” I tried not to blush. “Wish I could give you better news.”
“Jimmy says you’ve solved worse cases than mine,” Owen said, his face serene.
Past successes weren’t always indicators of future triumphs, but I kept my concern—and my suspicions—to myself. “Owen, how close were you to Gloriana?”
“Close?” The dark eyes were unreadable. “I worked for her, that’s all. Gloriana wasn’t the type to confide in the help.”
I noticed that Owen didn’t use Rosa’s more respectful “Miss Gloriana,” just “Gloriana.” Did it mean anything? “She never attempted to engage you in a personal conversation?”
His face remained blank. “What kind of personal conversation would she have with a handyman?”
“I’m only fishing around for ideas. By the way, how much do you know about Gloriana’s sisters?”
He gave me a gorgeous smile. “Those two? Not much. Well, except for last time she visited them. She seemed real upset on the way back home.”
Something had gone on between Gloriana and her sisters, something important enough to shatter her frosty reserve. “What exactly did she say?”
“She told me to drive fast, that she had some phone calls to make.” Then he added, “She didn’t carry a cell phone. She hated them. Just like she hated computers.”
“She didn’t say who she needed to call?”
His face revealed a hint of impatience. “I told you, Gloriana didn’t discuss her private business with the help. But it was probably something about lawyers, the usual. I didn’t really pay that much attention.”
More questioning elicited no further new information, so I gave up and turned the conversation to another subject. “Owen, what are you doing now that, uh, your job.…” I trailed off. What I really wanted to know was, Owen, do you have enough money to take care of your family while your case drags though the courts?
But I didn’t have to ask. Owen’s bronze face creased into a big, teeth-glittering smile. “I’m working for Zach. Some deliveries, a little gardening, some fetching and hauling for Megan’s rescue organization. Apparently Gloriana’s attorney told them they could go ahead and move into the Hacienda, so things haven’t changed for me that much. Except that life is more peaceful now.”
A slip, perhaps. He had so much as admitted there had been strain between him and Gloriana. I remembered that Gloriana had forced him to sit in the hallway during the banquet. Not for the first time, I wondered why. Could she have been punishing him for something?
“Say, Owen. I’ve heard that at the SOBOP banquet she made you sit out in the hall, rather than at the table. What was that all about?”
He looked away from me for a few seconds, out Desert Investigations’ big picture window. When I followed his eyes, I didn’t see anything interesting out there, nothing but tourists in rental cars driving slowly up and down the street.
When he finally looked back, he said, “Gloriana said it wouldn’t be appropriate for the help to eat at the same table as her business associates.”
I remembered the cameras, the photographs. “And that didn’t bother you?”
“Why would it?” As if it hadn’t fazed him.
But I knew better.
Then I chased my suspicions out of my mind. Owen had enough troubles without his own private investigator investigating him.
***
The rest of the day went by quickly. Using various computer search engines, one of them even legal, Jimmy discovered two felons among the applicants for a high-security job at a local computer chip manufacturer. While he reported his findings to the company’s personnel office, I busied myself making phone calls, lining up appointments with various people connected to Gloriana or Patriot’s Blood.
In March, the days are still fairly short, and by six the light began to fade. Jimmy left early in order to visit Owen, so when I was through with my paperwork, I locked up. Then I climbed the stairs to my apartment.
The monster in the closet.
As I searched through the rooms with my gun drawn, Gomez’ words mocked me. “You realize, Lena, that you can’t go on like this. Creeping into rooms as if something horrible were waiting for you….”
“Shut up!” I snapped to empty air. But I made quick work of the search this time. Progress?
I had just settled down on the sofa to watch the evening news when someone knocked on the door. Snatching the .38 from the coffee table, I walked to the double-bolted door and stared out the peephole.
Dusty.
“Go away!” I yelled.
“Not until we talk.” He voice was muffled through the steel-reinforced wood, but clear enough.
“Then you’ll sit out there all night!”
“Fine with me.”
I watched through the peephole as Dusty settled himself into a corner. Then I went into the kitchen, nuked some ramen, and came back to the sofa where I watched the top of the news, which had become little more than a laundry list of the day’s terrorist attacks. Recitation of the list completed, fatalities intoned, the anchors began talking about the latest celebrity accused of murder. I turned the TV off and headed for the bathroom.
I do some of my best thinking in the shower, but every time I tried to make sense out of Gloriana’s death, old voices kept intruding.
“Lena, honey, you’ve got to let someone love you sometime.” Madeline, the foster mother who had to relinquish me back to CPS when she developed breast cancer.
“Perfect love wipeth out all fear.” Reverend Giblin, trying in his own way to help.
They’d both seen through me, understood that my rage was no more than a cover-up for my terror.
Gomez had probably figured it out, too.
I leaned my head against the shower stall and whispered, “Why can’t you all shut up?” That’s when I realized that not all of the water on my face came from the shower.
What seemed like hours later, soggy and still miserable, I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in my terrycloth robe. I strode to the door and looked out the peephole again.
Dusty was still sitting on the landing.
I opened the door.
“Come in, you son of a bitch.”