Authors: David Bishop
Four years after my matriculation at Prison University, definitely a school of higher learning, the governor issued a pardon with my name on it. During my years inside, Axel had been my roommate. Since his parole a few weeks ago he’s been my assistant, researcher, and houseman as well as case nanny and friend. I had used my prison years to develop myself as an author of murder mysteries. Book readers have been kind enough to conclude that, as an ex-homicide cop and ex-con, I would know about murders. My books sell well enough to provide a comfortable living.
PQ believed someone would soon attempt to kill him. His life told me he wasn’t a man easily scared so I wanted to take him seriously, but he had nothing that pointed at anyone and no clear and convincing reasoning behind his belief. Still, PQ had never been a fool and clearly never a coward.
For starters, he wanted me to meet those close to him and suggest steps to improve his personal protection. It seemed like a soft job, and I liked Arizona. But mostly this was a favor for Fidge who, like cops everywhere, wanted to curry favor with his chief of police.
While driving, PQ squirmed several times, his jaw tight when he did. He said nothing about it; I respected his privacy and didn’t ask. After some preliminaries, he filled me in on his family and some of the key people who worked for PQ Industries, a conglomerate that included his copper mining operation, a cattle ranch, and scattered investments in land, stocks, and bonds. He had no basis for suspecting anyone at his company. His top management had all been with him for more than ten years. PQ married in his youth, had three children, and divorced nearly twenty years ago. He remarried a few years ago during a troubling period. His oldest son, Cord, had been discovered embezzling from PQ Industries. PQ had Cord arrested and, during the trial, met his new wife. His son was convicted and did several years in prison.
“My new wife, Robyn,” PQ explained, “kept carrying on about, ‘he’s your son.’ So, after my attorneys recovered my money from some offshore bank, I got my black sheep out of the hoosegow and put ‘im back to work, this time away from the company checkbook.”
After we arrived, PQ drove me around what he called his little spread: eight thousand acres dotted with cattle. He pointed just beyond the stables at a Sante Fe-style-stucco house faded dusty pink by the relentless desert sun. “That there’s the original ranch house. Cord bunks in it now.” He also showed me two prize bulls. A stallion and a few mares, together with two colts and a filly were kept in a paddock with its own horse barn, which included stalls and water PQ said was kept cooler than it could stay outdoors.
PQ walked me through his seven-thousand square-foot hacienda, showing me a spare computer in the study which I could use if I wanted to get online. After that he took me out to a casita that sat between the main house and a large swimming pool. I hadn’t brought trunks, but the casita came stocked, including a pair my current size: thirty-six. The whole scene felt more like a resort than being on the job.
* * *
That night I walked over to the main house and went into PQ’s study. The fragrance of a burning cinnamon candle on a sofa table gentled the room. A doublewide gun cabinet featured a collection of classic American and European handguns, including a German police pistol, Walther PPK. A rack of poker chips and a stack of games sat atop the gun display cases. The walls were dressed in wallpaper depicting old western towns and copper mines, along with wanted posters and badges from famous cow towns, including a Pinkerton Detective Agency badge. The Pinkertons, often operating as if they were the official law, were really a private detective firm that chased Jesse James and many of the desperadoes of the American West. His badge collection also held a brothel inspectors badge from Kansas City. An oil painting of a young woman dressed as a western saloon girl held center stage over an Old-Time roll-player piano, like those in common use soon after the turn of the century.
I used the computer on the far side of the room to catch up on some emails, including one from my publisher. I also wanted to make some notes from my earlier conversations with PQ. His daughter, Tedy, went to Las Vegas one weekend a month. PQ had never asked why. His first wife, Rebecca, the mother of his three children, had, nineteen years before, signed off any rights she might have had to his estate. She did this before leaving to do the Lord’s work in Brazil.
“Rebecca was a bone-skinny woman,” PQ had said during our approximate two-hour drive from Phoenix. “In all likelihood, she would a’ ended up an old maid if I hadn’t married her. I told her that once, she never forgave me. I said it in a moment of anger. I regretted it then, still do. While true, it was heartless. I’ve never forgiven myself for saying it.”
“Where is Rebecca now? Still in Brazil?”
“Oh, no, although, I admit, she lasted at that much longer than I imagined she would. But after, I don’t know exactly, maybe fifteen years or so in Brazil, the woman abruptly ended her do-gooding. When she got back to the states, she up and hired herself an attorney to try to reinstate the claim on my holdings she’d given up. Had she come to me, I would likely have treated her differently, but she never did, just sent her attorney. Well, sir, she ended up drilling one of them dry holes. When my attorney finished with her, she had zip. Well, almost zip, I did agree to pay her medical costs. A couple years later, the authorities finally learned what I always knew. Rebecca was a bonafide nut job. She got herself tossed in one of them hospitals with padded cells. I ‘spose we’re talking four years back, or thereabouts.”
“She never sees her kids?”
“Never tried,” he had said. “She just skedaddled to South America. Last thing I knew, she was in that psycho ward in Tennessee. She may be out now. The bills for all that stopped a few months ago.”
After finishing up my notes, I decided that tomorrow morning I’d chat with a few of the ranch hands. I hadn’t ridden a horse in a lot of years, but it had to be like a bicycle, once you knew how you knew how. PQ’s son, Cord, functioned as foreman, but I would wander on my own so he wouldn’t be there to intimidate the workers I spoke with. Tomorrow afternoon I’d go into Copper City to talk with the editor of the town newspaper, PQ’s banker and accountant, and the county sheriff. I’d also check with the barkeep at the tavern PQ had pointed out while we drove through town. “The local watering hole,” he had called it. PQ had signed and given me a letter of introduction requesting that people cooperate by answering my questions. The economy of Copper City depended, not solely, but significantly upon PQ Industries so when PQ asked for anything he generally got it.
When I turned toward the printer to pick up my notes, I saw a woman I knew had to be PQ’s daughter, Tedy. She walked through the cinnamon fragrance and approached me with a small, round, white band-aid clinging to her thigh just below the well-pressed cuff on her khaki shorts. From the size of the band-aid, the hurt was minor. Still, I did work for PQ and this woman was his daughter, so, if the opportunity arose, it would be not only my pleasure, but my duty to kiss it to make it better.
She smiled and turned toward me, her chestnut hair moving easily across her shoulders. She was the saloon girl in the painting. The difference being that old-west saloon girls didn’t wear modern bras. If they had, I doubted Wyatt Earp would have been able to tame Dodge City, Kansas, and Tombstone, Arizona. I introduced myself. She welcomed me to the PQ Ranch, and we sat talking about her family and her trips to Las Vegas where she worked a weekend a month in a shelter for battered women. She had started three years ago after a girlfriend had been a victim, and never gave it up.
The next morning my plans got changed. PQ invited me to accompany him to his Copper City headquarters to meet his key people and learn more about PQ Industries, with an eye toward enhancing his personal security. The morning was consumed with his showing me around and introducing me to his leadership group. Cord had not come into the office that day. Instead he had duties related to his being foreman of the ranch.
PQ’s headquarters and his own office were outfitted much like the study at his ranch, leather and an overall masculine feel. The major difference, his office lacked the picture of his daughter Tedy, done up like a saloon girl from the heyday of Hollywood westerns. His secretary’s office, departing from the masculine theme, had been furnished with early American, including a painting of two cats tumbling around with balls of yarn.
PQ Industries appeared to be completely modern, least as far as I could tell. There were computers everywhere, an employee lunchroom that seemed first class, even a designated outdoor smoking area. However, the phones were answered by real people. “Our customers don’t wanna talk with any danged computer,” PQ explained. “We ain’t never doin’ that.”
We took lunch with several of his executives. After lunch, PQ told me we would have dinner at home so I could meet his wife Robyn, and his two sons: Cord and his youngest, Quentin. I spent the afternoon reading through the personnel records of his key staff and talking on the phone with Axel. I gave him the names and Social Security numbers of PQ’s executive staff and department heads, along with the details on a Jonathan Gruder, a former sales manager who had spewed a lot of hate and threats upon termination. Axel would discover if any of these people had a record of any kind or were experiencing money troubles. It was all busy work. I still couldn’t put any meat on the bone about PQ being under a threat. There had been no phone calls or threatening letters, nothing to grab hold of.
We got back to PQ’s ranch late afternoon. I drifted out to the casita to change for dinner and Tedy came there to let me know PQ had, that morning, told the new cook, Gretchen, to prepare a holiday feast. “Daddy loves turkey and jellied cranberry sauce, and thinks it absurd to eat it only on Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
* * *
Several hours later, I joined PQ and Tedy in the study. A few minutes later Cord came in. The next to arrive was Mrs. Robyn Rutledge who wore a skirt short enough to allow the whites of her thighs to participate in the family gathering. After the introductions, we all sat at a long rustic dining table. PQ took the armchair at the head of the table. Robyn sat to her husband’s left, sided by PQ’s oldest son, Cord, and then Quentin. Tedy sat across the table from Robyn between her father and me.
Gretchen came in carrying the turkey platter. She held it close for PQ’s inspection before placing it center on the table. Gretchen was a very large woman, not tall, but wide with a round face and a puffy chin that maintained a touchy-feely relationship with her neck. Her snow white hair stacked above her head like it had been coiffed at Dairy Queen.
“Gretchen, you surely cook a beautiful bird,” PQ said, “nearly as good as my first wife.” His jowls jiggled while he laughed.
The cook stepped back. The polished heels of her heavy black shoes touched, her body hinting at a bow that never came. The grin on her face held no joy.
After we were served, Tedy said, “Daddy, please pass the gravy.”
“Here you go, Theodora.” PQ said while passing the gravy boat just as the handle of the ladle slid beneath the surface. The surface of the thickened brown sauce quickly mending itself as if the invasion had never occurred.
“Daddy, you know I prefer being called Tedy, everyone else does. From now on I won’t answer to Theodora.” She ignored the drowned ladle and dipped her spoon.
Cord’s blunt nose flared slightly with each breath. Otherwise his face remained stoic, as if it had been chiseled from a ranch stump. The face of a bully, nasty, the grown up face of a seventh grade lunch money thief.
“Sis,” Cord said, “do you spell that like the undergarment or the former senator from Massachusetts?”
“Neither. T-E-D-Y.”
PQ thumped the handle of his knife against the table. Tedy had alerted me he had been doing that ever since he watched the judge at Cord’s trial get absolute silence by banging his gavel. It seemed to work the same way for PQ.
“Theodora was your great-grandmother’s name.”
“Maybe I’ll take it back when I’m a great-grandmother,” Tedy said, “but I doubt it. It evokes an image of a tall, slender woman with her hair in a tight bun, and no tits.”
Robyn laughed suddenly, raising her napkin over her mouth and nose. The she glanced sideways at Cord.
“Tedy, not at the dinner table.”
“Now you’ve got it, Daddy, Tedy,” she said, pointing at her father. She winked as she passed me the chilled Sauvignon Blanc.
If people thought of tall, slender, and flat-chested when they heard the name Theodora, she had been right, for Tedy had tits. Not just every day, see ‘em at the supermarket boobs, but round, firm breasts that worked on a man the way bubbles worked on champagne.
She reached under the table and squeezed my thigh, then turned to her father. “Daddy, I believe you hired this handsome Mr. Kile to investigate us.”
PQ’s voice boomed. “If Matt Kile is here to investigate one of you, Tedy dear, he certainly has a fascinating group to pick from.”
“Just plain Tedy will do, Daddy, without the
dear
.”
Cord balanced his knife across the edge of his plate. His bearing suggested he would rather have driven the point into my chest, or at minimum into the table. “I think Kile’s here to investigate me.” His ‘investigate me’ fading into a low growl.
I decided I’d do my best not to cross Cord Rutledge. I stood well over six feet and had never been called slim, but Cord stood tall enough and wide enough to have a real person on the crucifix that hung from his neck, burrowed into his chest hair.
Quentin, PQ’s youngest, a pimply-faced nineteen-year-old with red-orange spiked hair, sat across the table to my right. PQ had been fifty-six when Quentin was born. From the old man’s references to his ex-wife I assumed she was of similar age. Quentin’s frequent glances at his older sister said his body was mass-producing testosterone, a dangerous state even for the few males who might be described as well-adjusted, whatever the hell that meant.