Murder in a Hot Flash (11 page)

“You religious, Miz Greene?”

“No, but I don't believe in psychics. That's a silly rumor that got started for the same reason most silly rumors do and I'll be the first to declare it isn't true. But let me point out, Sheriff, that no one has to be psychic to see you are holding the wrong person for the murder of Gordon Cabot and I intend to prove it.” Charlie's shins ached from the kicks the men across from her delivered under the table, accompanied by agonized looks of warning.

“I look forward to watching you do that, Miz Greene. Enjoy your eggs, folks.” He slapped his Smokey Bear hat on his ancient-astronaut crew cut, nodded to Mitch, handed his deputy the bill, and grabbed a toothpick at the counter on his way out.

“What do you want to do, get your mother hanged?” Mitch said. “Jesus.”

“Jesus doesn't believe in Charlie.” Scrag sat back so the waitress could deliver his order of steaming oatmeal; a plate heaped with huevos rancheros plus an extra side of beans and another of tortillas. He obviously was not expecting to pick up his own tab. “Wait a minute,” he said, the brown sugar suspended over his oatmeal. “I heard about you I think, wasn't it last year? You with that agency on Wilshire where the receptionist was a witch and they found her body in the alley?”

“Something like that.”

“What agency you with?” Mitch dug a pious spoon into a granola, yogurt, fresh fruit combination.

“Congdon and Morse.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Well, thank you very much.” Charlie dumped the poached eggs out of the bowl onto her toast order and poured the hot milk over it all. “Pass the salt and pepper.”

“And one of the agents was a psychic and solved the murder.”

“Not because she was a psychic and the Beverly Hills PD did most of the work.”

“That's not what I heard.”

“Hey, I'm sorry,” Mitch broke in. “I'm sure there're lots of little agencies I never heard of. And I wouldn't put down psychics if I were you. I've known a few who were good.”

Oh boy. “So how about you, now that your part in
Ecosystem
is done? Are you leaving?”

“I'd planned to stick around for a short river trip with John B. and Earl. Scout out sites for another documentary he's got in mind that I'm thinking of backing. Long as we're here. Now with the murder and Edwina in jail I don't know what's going to happen.”

“Edwina's my problem.”

“I already have a lawyer,” Charlie's problem told her. This time they sat across a table from each other in a small interrogation room with the same lady cop supervising. “You just go on home and tend to more important business.”

“Edwina, you know I can't go off and leave you in this mess.”

“Sure you can. Now I've got a lawyer I don't need an agent.” Her color was better this morning or else it was the indoor lighting. “Oh, but before you go, tell John B. he can't use the critter footage we shot last night.”

“Can't use it? Edwina, that's box office. People eat that stuff up.” Next to watching Mitch Hilsten bat his eyelashes, they'll remember seeing those critters doing their critter thing. “How often do you get creatures in the wild to sit still for a camera like that?”

“That's just it,” Edwina said. “You don't.”

“You don't expect me to go out there and try to tell him those weren't real rats and bats and that fox wasn't really a fox like this isn't really a desert?”

“They're real enough, but that's not the way they really act. The bat would have taken off when we shone a light on it while it was eating the moth. The fox, maybe, was acting normally. He was young and he was curious about the lights and all that food was sitting there waiting for him. But rats don't sit still like that for foxes to catch and eat them.”

“Look, those jets flying over just before dark probably upset the critters' habits but the point is you can't expect John B. Drake to keep from taking advantage of it. Who's going to know the difference? Besides, what's a dumb rat know anyway?”

“Never underestimate the intelligence of a rodent.” Edwina pushed her glasses up on her nose. “In my lab there isn't a one that isn't more intelligent than the grad student feeding him.”

“Then how come the rats are in the cages and the students run free?” Here we are having a totally stupid argument and you've just been charged with murdering a man with an ax.

Edwina peered blankly over her glasses. “Why would anybody want to study a grad student?”

Chapter
12

“You mean she really doesn't have a lawyer?” Mitch stood in the bathroom door of Charlie's smelly room, clean clothes draped over his arm. They'd agreed, since he'd found the last room in town for her, he could use her shower. Since the murder had been “solved” everyone was free to leave Dead Horse Point but no longer allowed to use the precious water hauled in to bathe.

“She's going to let the court appoint one.”

“She can't do that.”

“She says she doesn't care what happens to her. All she wants to talk about is persuading Drake not to use the critter footage he was so proud of last night because the animals wouldn't have acted that way normally. I'm going out to the Point to ask some pointed questions of the
Animal Aliens
crew while they're still around. But first I'm going to call home and buy some clean clothes.”

“Tell you what,” Mitch said. “I'll scout out a lawyer for Edwina and take your dirty clothes with mine to the Sudzy Duds if you'll let me take you out to dinner tonight. Deal?” He closed the door on his gleaming smile and his dirty bod.

“Maggie, guess what? I'm in a motel room in Moab, Utah, with Mitch Hilsten.”

“Oh, right, Greene.”

“He's in the bathroom, taking a shower. We're at the Pit Stop Motel, Room Eight.”

“Charlie, can I take this call to mean you won't be home today either?”

“Yeah. What's happening back there?” You tell me your bad news and I'll tell you mine.

“I would like to apologize for all those cracks I made about you learning to trust your daughter.”

“I expected something Saturday night. But Monday? She's not hurt or in jail?”

“No, in fact she's the one who called the police. Just that she should have done it sooner. The damage to your place isn't as bad as we thought at first—that's Larry and me … your assistant? He's been so much help. And the cat showed up this morning. I was worried he'd been killed or something and … Charlie?”

“Maggie … just what was it that happened last night?”

“Too many kids over there and things got out of hand. Nothing meaner than a bunch of immature drunks.”

“I told her no drinking and she could have no more than three friends in at a time when I'm not there.” Hell, I make a lot of rules, like any good mommy.

“That's all she did at first, but apparently word got out you were away and suddenly half the football team drops by. Of course, she couldn't turn them down. You know how she likes to be popular. I got in about eleven-thirty and the cops were just pulling up. Larry has scheduled a carpet cleaner who's coming in tomorrow and most of the furniture is all right. Some blinds will have to be replaced. Hey, in a few days you'll hardly know anything happened. Larry boarded up the window over the kitchen sink and he's finding somebody to put in glass. And you'd be proud of me, I stood right over Libby and made her clean up the puke herself. Charlie … you don't really have Mitch Hilsten in a motel room?”

“When you come in from a campground all you can think about is a shower.” MY GOD WHAT'S THE DAMAGE GOING TO COST ME?

“If I were in a motel room with Mitch Hilsten, a shower'd be the last thing I'd think about. Is he why you're not coming home today?”

Charlie explained about Edwina.

“That's totally ridiculous.”

You're always telling me I should trust her more too. “Too bad the sheriff doesn't think so.”

“That sucks. You take care of your mom and I'll see to the little cheerleader. She'll spend her nights over here till you get back. And, Charlie, Libby really does feel awful about her friends trashing your place.”

“You mean guilty. She comes by it naturally.” And she wasn't little. She was taller than either Charlie or Maggie. But Libby liked Maggie and just maybe enough to obey the order to spend the night there.

While Charlie was out buying another set of clothing, she found Scrag Dickens lounging on a street corner and agreed to give him a ride back to Dead Horse Point. So, while a superstar was washing her panties with his shorts at the Sudzy Duds, she was driving alone with a prime suspect in an ax murder across lonely desolate no woman's land.

And she thought her mother was crazy.

“So, where do you keep your ax, Scrag?”

“Don't have one. Carrying the damn things makes it real difficult to get a ride when you're hitching. That was your mother's ax I had Friday night.” Was it just Charlie or did he sound smug?

“So, where's your home?”

“Oh, I got some parents in L.A. and a brother in Oregon and a sister in Florida and an ex-wife in Kansas. I stop in places more than live in 'em. Hang out a lot around location sites. Pick up work. I enjoy the milieu.” A surprising vulnerability softened that last sentence, followed by a nervous glance.

“Acting work?”

“Bit parts, dead bodies, doubles, whatever. Sometimes I'm an extra, gofer … done some stunt work. John B. and Earl and I go way back and I met Hilsten years ago too. When he was in
Tortured Prince
. How about you? Mitch tells me you're adopted. Ever had the urge to look up your birth mother?”

“God no, one's enough. Ever done anything else besides travel and hang out?”

“Taught English literature at a private boys' school in Virginia for years. Stood it as long as I could and hit the road. So, you don't think your mother did it?”

“I don't think my mother did it. You have any children?”

“Two that I know about. I don't have the urge to look them up either. Understand your agency's in trouble.”

“Who told you that?”

“Gordon Cabot.”

“Do you go way back with Cabot too?”

“You going to submit to the old Hilsten line?”

“Who do you think killed Gordon Cabot?”

“Why don't you save us both time and use your psychic powers?”

“I think you're really a studio spy.” Or an ax murderer. Or both.

This time it was a relief to be stopped at a roadblock and this time it was much closer to the campground. The stoic deputy checked to be sure they were neither tourists nor reporters and let them pass.

Even before she parked behind Howard's Jeep, Charlie could see her mother's tent trailer was occupied.

“Sorry, Tawny got pissed and kicked me out,” John B. explained. He and Sidney Levit sat at Edwina's tiny table over coffee, cream cheese, lox and bagels, and chocolate-coated strawberries.

“You didn't get that from these cupboards.”

“No, but we used your mother's gas to boil coffee.”

“You better be careful, this woman's a psychic and Jesus doesn't like her.” Scrag helped himself to a strawberry.

“What are you doing sitting here, Sid?” Charlie asked. “You're supposed to be playing frenzied director about now.” His smile was warm and more fatherly than Howard's had ever been. Charlie liked Sid a lot better than she had Gordon Cabot. He had liver spots on the backs of his hands. Had those hands wielded her mother's ax three nights ago? “Don't you have to get permission from the Directors Guild to take Gordon's place?”

“No, because we're nonunion. Only two major location shoots left. Gordon already had the army set up for this one. Stan, my production manager, is putting the finish on the layout. Want to come watch?”

No one even mentioned Edwina's little problem. Charlie could very well be sitting in Edwina's tent trailer with the murderer. Charlie didn't mention Edwina's problem either. “Wouldn't miss it.”

As it happened nobody wanted to miss this one. Charlie found herself driving Earl and Tawny out to the location site in Howard's Jeep right behind Scrag and John B., who rode with Sidney in the Humvee.
Return of an Ecosystem
had nothing on the docket again until tomorrow.

Isn't it interesting, Charlie, that Mitch Hilsten didn't seem worried about you coming out here to snoop out a murderer? Didn't even warn you to be careful? In a book or film, he'd have warned you.

In a film, I'd be in Moab washing the underwear and he'd be here doing the snooping.

Unless he's the murderer, or knows who is and that you aren't in danger.

Oh shut up.

Like most people, Charlie'd learned to ignore her inner voice. It was invariably wrong.

“So, how does John B. come in under budget flying dailies out and chocolate strawberries in and taking a whole day off?” she asked her passengers in the real world. And what is the scandal about him I can't remember?

“Guy that runs the lab, his brother-in-law's Lew. Lew owns the plane with a couple of other guys. He's trying to get flight hours,” Earl yelled in her ear and Charlie winced. Her hearing was painfully good. “Just charging Drake for fuel and repairs. We're down to a skeleton crew now anyway.”

She was thoroughly lost by the time they turned off the paved road back to the highway and then off it onto a dirt road wandering out across another mesa and down another dirt road to the benchland below it. And by this time she'd learned some confusing things about Tawny and the cameraman and clouds had appeared in what had been a perfectly clear sky when they started out.

Tumbling clouds that propelled color and depth and shadow into an already overpowering landscape. And the other two people in the Jeep transmogrified just as suddenly, became unexpectedly striking and individual.