Old Poison (8 page)

I shook my head. “Just an email address, and
it’s no longer a valid address.”

“Jesus! Let’s recap here. You meet your
clients on bicycle trails, city parks, and chat rooms, and you get
no addresses and no phones. Hunter, if you’re bullshitting me, I’ll
have you up on obstruction charges so fast it will make your
friggin’ head swim. So what great PI job did you do for these
unidentifiable clients?”

“None. I met with Evelyn; we agreed I didn’t
know enough about the environmental movement to help with her book,
and I left.”

“You got any notes of this meeting, any
letter rejecting the work? Oh, I’m forgetting. You’d have to mail
it to the bike trail. Do you know how flimsy that sounds? I could
have a subpoena this afternoon to turn your ‘office’ and any other
private property that got in the way of our search, so don’t hold
out on me, Hunter.”

In my most contrite and humble tone I
answered, “I do realize how unprofessional it must look to have no
more information on these people than I do, and I am thoroughly
embarrassed by it, but you must understand, I never took them
seriously. As you surmised, researching novels is not exactly my
stock-in-trade.”

I reached into my purse and pulled out a
page from the
Times
documenting my message to Borson. “You
see, Borson had someone deliver a cash retainer, and I don’t even
know how to get it back to him. But I am being perfectly legal. I
even opened a separate client trust account to keep his money
separate from my other client funds.”

Camas read it and handed it back. “He ever
get in touch?”

“He hasn’t sent me any address for the
return of his retainer, but I promise you, when he does, I will
call you with the address immediately.”

If Agent Camas figured out the difference
between the question he asked and the carefully worded answer I
gave, I’d be dead meat. To distract him from that fine detail, I
kept talking.

“Look, all the guy asked me to do was some
research that I didn’t think I would do anyway. I only obliged him
in meeting with Evelyn because he said if it didn’t work out, he
would go away and leave me alone. It was a way of getting rid of an
unwanted client. It didn’t seem like a real case, so I didn’t take
him seriously or check references. How was I to know this would
happen?”

He studied me and he studied his notebook.
He needed a little redirection.

“If you want more information on Evelyn, why
don’t you check the organizers of the First International
Environmental Expo in Long Beach. She was a keynote speaker or
something. They ought to have lots of stuff on her.”

He took a breath, gave me his toothy,
lopsided smile and said, “Right. I’ll do that. It’s been a real
pleasure dealing with such a pro, Hunter.”

* * * * *

Her body had been found a hundred miles
northeast of Flagstaff. The dry wash wasn’t on the map, but with
the instruction I had gotten at the library in Tuba City, it wasn’t
hard to find. I left the highway a few miles out of Tuba City and
followed a good dirt road north to the foot of the butte. Parking
my rented jeep at the first spot where the road bent close to the
wash, I walked up the dry riverbed looking for some sign that would
indicate the exact location.

The temperature was right on my comfort
cusp, a little too cool in the shade, making the sun feel
deliciously soothing and warm. Despite my unhappy purpose for being
here, the happy memories of childhood seemed to materialize in the
clear air of the open desert, like ghosts, unexpected and
unbidden.

The mines my dad had run were always two
hundred miles from anywhere, so I’d spent my free time searching
those open, wild lands for neat rocks, trap door-spiders, lizards,
coyotes, rabbits, birds, wind-carved caves and other secret places,
known only to me and the critters.

With habit engendered by early training, I
placed my feet carefully, making only a whisper of sound in the
sand and giving a wide berth to any brush or rock that might
conceal a rattlesnake soaking up a last bit of the early winter sun
before hibernation.

The crime scene wasn’t hard to spot. There
were several sets of tire tracks on the west bank, just before the
wash made a wide turn past a red sandstone cliff. As I walked from
the sunny wash into the cold shadow of the cliff, a shiver ran down
my spine. It wasn’t due entirely to the change in temperature. If
Evelyn’s spirit had survived, she was here in the desert, not in
the morgue.

At the library in town I had looked up the
newspaper report on her death. It didn’t tell me much, but as I
looked around, neither did this dry wash. I found month-old tire
tracks, rounded spots in the sand that may have once been
footprints, and a bit of rabbit fur caught on a creosote bush.
Nearby coyote tracks finished the rabbit’s tale, but what of
Evelyn? Was she dead when she was dumped here, or was this cliff
the last thing she saw before she died? Etched in my memory was the
look on her face as she left in that taxi, sad, frightened,
resigned. Had she known her fate in advance? Why then would she run
to it? Was her death due to that damned diary or her protests or
some tragic accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong
time?

“Damn you, Evelyn! Why didn’t you let me
help you?” The sound of my own voice breaking the silence of this
empty place was a shock. More surprising was the pain I heard in my
own cry. I sat on an outcropping at the edge of the cliff, studied
the sand, and wondered what on earth I thought I would accomplish
by coming to this spot.

I stood and began a careful foot-by-foot
search. I worked my way slowly upstream for about two hundred yards
until the path became choked with rocks, cactus, and brush, then I
turned around and headed back, searching the same ground from
another perspective.

By the time I retraced my steps the sun was
setting and the clouds to the west were blocking what little
daylight remained. Streaks of gray streamed down from the ragged
edges of the clouds, and the winds carried the sweet perfume of wet
earth, creosote and sage. Some lucky folks were getting rain, and I
was getting cold.

Standing there blithely considering the
blessing of rain in the dry lands, it dawned on me that those heavy
rain clouds were upstream, and it would be wise to head for higher
ground. It is a bleak irony that every year a few folks die in the
middle of the desert by drowning. You don’t get much warning. The
water begins as a hard rain in the highlands. Drops collect one by
one, forming many tiny rivulets that converge into fewer but larger
dry stream beds until finally a wall of water of awesome power
fills the main channel. Moving brush, boulders, and debris down the
wash, the flood fills the silent desert with a monstrous roar. When
I was a young girl I would go out and wait beside a wash, hoping to
see a flash flood. Twice I was lucky enough to be in the right
place at the right time. I stood mesmerized, taking guilty pleasure
in the exhilaration of being so close to such thrilling power, and
knowing my dad would kill me if he found out.

Thinking of childhood adventure, I climbed
out of the wash and was brought abruptly back to present time. A
man stood on the bank watching me. I thought briefly about the gun
I had left in my suitcase in the car and hoped I wouldn’t need
it.

“Good evening,” he said.

“Hello.”

“I saw your jeep down there. You having any
trouble?”

“No, no trouble. You, ah, just passing by
this far off the highway?”

He smiled and his thin features lit with a
warmth and shy charm. “No. Sorry if I startled you.”

As he walked a little closer, I could see he
wore a police uniform, but the identifying shoulder patch was
hidden under his blue denim jacket. He was about five-foot-ten,
slender, with wide shoulders, slim hips, and looked to be in his
late twenties or early thirties. He introduced himself, but my
brain was so busy wondering if this could be Evelyn’s killer that I
didn’t catch his full name, just Jim somebody.

I responded automatically with my own
self-introduction and saw his face change completely. His smile was
replaced with a look of startled recognition. In that first
telltale moment, I saw a candor I usually associate with persons
totally lacking in the stony-faced artifice of law enforcement. In
the following moments, however, his quiet, slow appraisal of me
showed the control and self-assurance of an experienced police
officer. The measured tone of his voice told me he had carefully
constructed his next question.

“Diana Hunter. What brings you here, Ms.
Hunter?”

I decided to give no information until I got
a little. “I was rock hunting. What brings you here?”

He considered the question, and probably
read my apprehension. His voice took on that quiet, relaxed,
conversational tone a good police officer can use to reassure a
nervous witness.

“I’m on my way home. My house is just a
little way on down this road. Out here if we see a car off-road,
like your jeep, we check to make sure the driver isn’t lost or sick
or injured. A few weeks ago I met another woman here when I was on
my way to the office. I stopped to see if she needed any help and
she assured me she didn’t. Basically told me to mind my own
business. So I did, or thought I did. About a week later I saw her
here again, but that time she had been murdered. So you see why I
would be reluctant to leave another woman out here in the same
place.” Though he tried to keep his voice even, I could hear an
echo of my own regrets. Evelyn had gotten to him too.

“You actually spoke to her a week before she
was killed?”

A hint of angry defensiveness slipped into
his voice. “I tried to get her to let me help her, but she flat-out
refused and she wasn’t doing anything to arrest her for or–

“I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “I didn’t mean
to imply criticism. Believe me, I understand. Evelyn did the same
thing to me, refused my help and left in a taxi. I never heard from
her again until the FBI called me yesterday to identify her
body.”

“Yesterday! Camas just got around to calling
you yesterday?”

A clap of thunder rolled through the clouds
above us, and large drops of rain started making quarter-sized
rings on the ground.

“It was your PI card we found in her, her
clothing?”

It was more a statement than a question, but
I nodded.

“So you did know her. You called her Evelyn.
Look, this case isn’t my jurisdiction. It’s FBI, and you aren’t
legally obligated to talk with me; but I really need to know what
that woman was doing and why she was murdered practically at my
door step.”

“Actually I was hoping you could tell me
what she was doing. I don’t think I can help you much, but I would
like to talk to you about it.”

He looked at the sky. “We’re gonna get
soaked if we stand here. Would you like to have a cup of coffee or
something at my place?”

All my instincts told me he offered no
threat, but the cautious one on my internal committee still caused
a momentary hesitation. He picked up on it immediately.

“If we talked at the police station that
would sort of make it official business, which it isn’t; but if you
like, we could drive back to town and talk over dinner at a
restaurant.”

“No,” I answered. “A coffee at your house
sounds fine.”

His small trailer home was orderly except
for the large number of books stuffed into every available corner.
He offered me a seat at a table and began assembling the
coffee-making equipment. With a shy apology he explained, “This
won’t take too long. I just use this cone and make it right in the
cup. Almost as fast as instant, but it tastes better.”

I smiled and nodded.

He looked in the refrigerator and then at me
and said somewhat hesitantly, “I don’t have much in here but some
leftover lamb stew.”

“If that’s an offer, I accept. I just
realized that I haven’t eaten today. After an unpleasant interview
with Agent Camas at the morgue this morning, I went straight to the
rental car agency and drove from Flagstaff to Tuba City.”

As he put the stew on to heat he said,
“Well, he’s enough to ruin your appetite, all right.”

He said it in such a quiet, straight-faced
manner that it caught me by surprise, and I laughed a little too
loudly. His appearance at the wash had startled me, and my cackling
outburst was partly an emotional release as my adrenaline began to
subside.

He served the coffee and sat down across
from me. I was about to admit that I hadn’t caught his last name,
but his first question distracted me.

“You know, he had that business card of
yours from the time the body was found. I know because I found the
body. Why do you think he took so long to contact you?”

“I don’t know, but the way he talked to me
made it obvious that he has a low opinion of both private
investigators and women. I’m afraid what I had to tell him pretty
much confirmed his prejudice.”

“What did you tell him?”

His question was direct but did not have the
coldness of interrogation. Taking a good look at my new friend in
the light of his home, I found his brown eyes reassuring, observant
and honest. Though there was tension in his face, he seemed to need
to know about Evelyn on the same level I did. I kept my story
simple and close to what I had told Camas. He listened quietly,
without interruption.

When I had finished, he went to the stove
and dished up two bowls of hot stew. It smelled wonderful, and I
dived in as soon as was polite. As we ate, I asked, “When you
talked to Evelyn did she say anything that would help, like who she
was meeting, where she was staying, why she had come to the
desert?”

He put down his spoon, rubbed his chin
thoughtfully, and finally answered, “Well, no, not really. She told
me she was on an archeological dig.” Then he smiled and got in his
own dig by adding, “Sort of like your rock hunting, I suspect,
because I don’t know of any significant site around there. When I
asked how she got out there, she basically told me to mind my own
business. She said that unless she was breaking some law, I was to
go away and leave her alone. I was in a hurry to get to my office
and didn’t need some crazy woman to make a bad week worse, so I
took her at her word and left.”