Minor in Possession (21 page)

According to him, Paco and Tony each had long rap sheets. Monty, presumably a much bigger fish, had never before been nailed, although both his existence and his name had long been rumored in drug-dealing circles.

What seemed to puzzle everyone concerned was why guys who were basically successful drug runners would suddenly involve themselves in
the much less lucrative and potentially far riskier crime of kidnapping. It wasn't logical. I certainly couldn't shed any light on that topic, and the prisoners didn't either.

With everyone else deciding who should go where and how it should all be accomplished, there was little or nothing for Rhonda and me to do but sit in the background, huddle under ambulance blankets, try to keep warm, and watch the three-ring circus unfold around us.

“You know that .38 I gave you earlier?” I asked her in a careful undertone when we were alone.

“Yes. What about it?”

“So far it hasn't been fired, right?”

“Right.”

“So how about if I make you a gift of it? I don't want any of these hotshots getting me on a concealed weapons charge.”

“What about me?” Rhonda asked.

“You're an artist, not a cop. People expect artists to do crazy things.”

She nodded and laughed. “Thanks for the present,” she added. “Remind me to return the favor.”

The sun had gone down and it was becoming increasingly chilly when one of the tow-truck drivers—there were now three separate tow trucks on the scene—came looking for us.

“You J. P. Beaumont?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I called Alamo,” he said, almost apologetically, “you know, to see where they wanted me to tow
the Beretta. Someone from there is on the radio. They want to talk to you.”

I'll just bet they do, I thought, as he led me to his truck and handed me the microphone. I pushed down the switch. “This is J. P. Beaumont. Over,” I said.

“Mr. Beaumont?”

“Yes. Over.”

It was a woman's voice, controlled but furious. “My name is Lucille Radonovich, District Manager for Alamo Rent A Car.”

“What can I do for you, Ms. Radonovich? Over.” I tried to sound reassuring, engaging, casual. It didn't work.

“You are a dangerous man, Mr. Beaumont,” she declared.

“Look,” I said, reasonably, “I took the extra collision insurance you sold me. Ten dollars a day. Everything's fine, right? Over.”

Lucille Radonovich was not to be dissuaded. “Mr. Beaumont, everything is not fine. You may have taken the additional insurance, but it may or may not be valid depending on the exact geographical location of the accident.”

“It wasn't an accident,” I interrupted helpfully. “That guy shot it with a Colt .45. On purpose. Over.”

She continued, as though I hadn't spoken. “Mr. Beaumont, I have been directed to tell you to turn your keys over to our representative, the tow-truck driver. Immediately. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Later on, someone from this office will be in touch with either you or your attorney to settle your account.”

“Does this mean I don't get another car? Over.”

I already knew the answer to my question, but I had to ask, had to hear it from her own lips.

And Ms. Lucille Radonovich's reaction was exactly what I expected—no more, no less. A pause. A long pregnant pause, and then a slowly released breath like a dangerously stressed valve letting off excess pressure.

“Some things go without saying, Mr. Beaumont. Over and out!”

Without a word, I handed the keys to the Beretta over to the tow-truck driver. He looked at them for a moment, then walked away, shaking his head.

I watched him go and realized that it would be a hell of a long walk back to Ralph Ames' home in Paradise Valley some two hundred miles away.

I went back to where Rhonda sat waiting. She was chilled. Her teeth were chattering. I put my arm around her shoulder and she snuggled close to me.

“Are these the people who killed Joey?” she asked. “Or was it somebody else?”

I squeezed her shoulder and held her tight. “No way to tell,” I answered, “at least not right now.”

We sat there for another half hour and watched while the tow trucks began to haul away wrecked cars.

“How are we going to get home?” she asked,
lifting her head off my shoulder to look at me as though the thought hadn't occurred to her before.

“I don't know. It could be a very long walk.”

Rhonda Attwood must have been starting to feel better.

“You mean that nice Ralph Ames won't come get us the way he did for you up in Prescott?” she asked.

“We'll see,” I said. “He may have run out of patience with me the same way Alamo has.”

F
ortunately, Ralph Ames is a forgiving man—a most forgiving man with an inexhaustible supply of good connections. Once alerted to our plight, he hired another helicopter and came to Tucson to get us.

By three the next morning he had successfully extricated Rhonda Attwood and me from the clutches of the F.B.I. By four he had dragged us home to Paradise Valley. When it was time to go to bed, Rhonda made not the slightest pretense of going to her own designated room. She undressed in mine, crawled into bed, snuggled contentedly against my chest, and instantly fell asleep.

There was no seduction, no game-playing. We were both far too tired. I drifted off within minutes as well and slept the heavy, dreamless sleep born of exhaustion. My body's resources had been driven far beyond the reaches of endurance.

My own noisy snoring woke me up the next morning. The sun was already well up behind the
looming hump of Camelback Mountain, and I was in bed alone.

Guiltily, I wondered if my snoring had awakened Rhonda and driven her from the room, but a quick check of her room showed it was empty as well, the bed untouched. I glanced at the bedside clock. It was already almost ten—high time to be up and about, especially considering the fact that Joey's funeral was scheduled for three that afternoon.

I hurried into the bathroom, took a quick shower, dressed, and then went prowling Ames' house in search of intelligent life. There wasn't any. Rhonda Attwood was nowhere to be found, and neither was Ames, but the coffee carafe was full of hot, aromatic coffee. I was just pouring myself a cup when the phone rang.

“Detective Beaumont?”

I recognized Guy Owens' brisk voice at once. “Hello, Guy. How's Michelle?”

“Much better, thank you. They pumped her stomach. She's up and around.”

“What about you? How's the leg?”

“In a cast, but it'll mend.” He paused, sounding somewhat uncertain. “I need to ask you a question, Detective Beaumont. I never had a chance yesterday, but today I need to know the answer.”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you and Rhonda Attwood come to Sierra Vista?”

I could feel myself being painted into a corner. I sensed the hidden traps inherent in any answer
I might give, so I waffled. “You should ask Rhonda that question, Guy, not me.”

“Put her on the phone, then, and I will,” he returned.

“Sorry. She's not here right now.”

“But now is when I need the answer,” Guy insisted stubbornly.

I heard a hard edge come into his voice, a tone that I recalled hearing once before during our long, fruitless wait in my cabin, that night seemingly eons ago. Then we had been linked by the mutual bond of outraged fatherhood. A lot of painful water had gone under the bridge since then. Now, five long days later, my connection with Rhonda Attwood had somehow, inexplicably, forced me into a separate camp. Guy Owens and I were no longer on the same team. I could hear it in his voice.

“I'm sure Rhonda will be back soon,” I countered. “She may just have gone out to have her hair done or do some shopping.”

Truthfully, neither of those two options sounded much like the Rhonda Attwood I knew, but they were the best I could come up with at a moment's notice, and Guy Owens didn't question them.

“There are decisions to make,” Guy Owens replied stiffly. “Important decisions, and they need to be made now. This morning. So you tell me, Detective Beaumont. Why did she come to the house? What did she want?”

And suddenly all the responsibility for the fu
ture of Rhonda Attwood's single potential grandchild was thrust solely onto my shoulders. With Michelle Owens already a patient in a hospital where the lieutenant colonel's best buddy ran the show, I knew there wouldn't be any problem scheduling her for a bit of minor surgery. The innocuous diagnosis would say that some unspecified female difficulty had prompted a routine D & C. In the process, the embryo of Joey Rothman's posthumous progeny would be summarily scraped out of existence.

“Rhonda wanted to talk to you,” I said lamely.

“What about?”

Guy Owens wasn't making it easy for a me. “To try to talk you out of the abortion,” I replied. “She's willing to help with the baby, financially, I mean, and with raising it too. Joey was her only son, you see, and—”

Guy Owens cut me off before I could say any more. “That's all I wanted to know,” he said bluntly, hanging up the phone without bothering to say good-bye.

I stood there holding the handset, looking at it gloomily, listening to the empty buzz of dial tone, and knowing I'd blown it. Completely blown it! Maybe Rhonda herself could have convinced him, but I sure as hell hadn't. Feeling both powerless and inept, I flung the phone back into its cradle. Where the hell was she anyway? Why wasn't she here to handle her own damn problems?

Far away, in some other part of the house, I heard a shower turn on. It was a welcome diver
sion. It meant someone besides me was still hanging around. I settled down to drink a cup of coffee and to wait and see who would appear.

Ames, still bleary-eyed, stumbled into the kitchen a few minutes later. He headed straight for the coffee. “Rhonda's still asleep?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Up and gone already,” I told him. “I thought you and she had taken off somewhere together.”

“Are you kidding? Not me. I just woke up a few minutes ago. Where'd she go, and how?” he asked.

“Beats me.” I shrugged, but I was beginning to feel uneasy about her absence. Walking over to the door that led out to the garage, I opened it and looked inside. Ames' enormous white Lincoln wasn't parked where we had left it.

“Did you give her permission to use your car?” I asked.

Frowning, Ames came over to where I was standing and looked out at the empty garage for himself. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not that I remember.”

He turned back into the room and checked in the cupboard drawer where he usually deposited the fistful of car keys whenever he entered the house.

“The keys are gone,” he announced.

“Stealing car keys must run in the family,” I commented humorlessly.

Ralph ignored me. “She must have taken it, then. Are you sure she didn't leave a note some
where telling you where she was going?”

“No. Not that I found.”

“Great,” Ralph muttered. “That's just great. Here we are, stuck without a car, and she's off God knows where doing God knows what. We'll just have to wait for her to turn up, that's all.”

Maybe Ralph is constitutionally capable of sitting patiently and waiting for someone to “turn up,” but I'm not. I'm terrible at waiting.

“You could always call and report the Lincoln stolen,” I suggested.

“Are you kidding? Have Rhonda Attwood arrested for car theft?” Ralph asked incredulously. “Not on your life. She'll come back. You'll see. I'm going to go out and sit by the pool. Care to join me?”

“No thanks.”

Instead, I paced the floor for a while, trundling back and forth through the house, looking out the windows and peering up and down the street hoping to catch sight of the Lincoln as it turned in at the end of the driveway. No such luck.

Time passed. I don't know how much, but finally, when Ralph came in to pour himself another cup of coffee, I couldn't wait any longer. I picked up the phone and dialed Detective Delcia Reyes-Gonzales' direct number at the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department. It was Monday morning, and she was at her desk.

“I see you're splashed all over the front page of the
Republic
again this morning, Beau,” Delcia said with a musical laugh when I identified myself.
“There are only fourteen counties in this state, and so far you've raised hell in five of them. How much longer do you plan on staying around?”

“This is serious, Delcia,” I cut in. “Rhonda's missing.”

“No!” Delcia sounded alarmed.

“I woke up around ten, and she was gone. So is Ralph Ames' car.”

“No note?”

“Nothing.”

“Any sign of a struggle?”

“No.”

“These bastards don't give up easy, do they,” Delcia breathed. She was leaping to the same uncomfortable conclusion that was beginning to dawn on me.

“Not very. What do you suggest?”

“Have you reported her missing?”

“No. Ralph didn't think it was necessary. He won't even report the car being gone. He's convinced she's just out running errands and that she'll be back.”

“He could be right,” Delcia said dubiously, “but I'm not so sure, especially considering what all's happened in this case during the last few days. But since it
is
his car…”

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 a 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.