Beverly shrugged. “He’s had his problems there but nothing serious. I think they’d take his side over yours.”
Matt stood up abruptly. “Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Harrison. If you’d give me those numbers and addresses for your brothers, I think we’re done here for now.”
“Certainly.” Beverly wrote something on a pad, tore off the top sheet, and handed it to Matt. “I’m sure they will be glad to help. The peridot industry is important to the reservation, and they would not want to see any trouble there. May I see you out?”
She said nothing beyond the barest of formalities as she escorted us out of the building. Cam kept his eyes on her for most of the walk, until she had disappeared inside. “Damn. I can’t say she’s the one, but I can’t say she isn’t either. My memory’s just too fuzzy.
“Matt, did our exit have something to do with that phone call?”
Matt glanced at me. “Denis is MIA. Apparently, when he called me this morning, he wasn’t calling from home. His wife called the station a little while ago to report him missing. She said he dropped her off at home last night—after leaving your place, I assume—and then went somewhere and never came back. She has no idea where he is.”
“Do you think he’s hiding? And why now?”
“I don’t know, and I’m not going to guess. But one thing I do know: I need to talk to Will Montoya—assuming we can find him.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Em, I didn’t mean you and Cam. Cam’s already identified Montoya from the photo, and taking him along would only complicate things. Montoya may be armed, and I don’t want Cam in harm’s way. This is police business. I’ll drop you back at your place.”
I sneaked a glance at Cam. “You go ahead—we’ll get home on our own.”
Matt looked torn. He wanted to get on with tracking down Will Montoya and the Harrison brothers, but I’m not sure he trusted me. “Em, don’t mess with this.”
“Matt, I am happy to leave the police work to you. And I’m sure Cam is too.” I looked at Cam—I knew he would take my side. He nodded.
Finally Matt said, “All right. Go home, go about your business. I’ll call you when I can, if there’s any news.”
“Thank you. And take care.”
Chapter 29
Peridot is the softest of all the precious stones.
Cam and I watched as Matt pulled away. Then he
turned to me. “All right, Em, what are you doing?”
“I want to talk to Beverly again.”
“Why? She said she doesn’t know what her husband has been doing lately.”
“Cam, are you sure she wasn’t the woman who brought you home the other night?”
“Em,” he said, his tone exasperated, “I told you I wasn’t sure about any of it. She could have been, but she’s not about to admit it.”
“Not to Matt and the combined police forces of three counties. But maybe she’ll talk to us.”
“Em, Matt said to stay out of this. He can handle it.”
“Cam, I trust him to handle the search for Will, and now for Denis. I trust him to run background checks and do forensic stuff and make arrests. But I don’t think he’s the right guy to talk to a woman who’s trying to protect someone.”
“Who? Montoya? Her brothers? Herself?”
“Maybe all three. Let’s find out.” I turned back to the building and pushed open the door. The poor receptionist flinched at the sight of us. “Excuse me, there’s something I forgot to ask Ms. Harrison. I’ll just pop into her office for a moment, okay?”
I started moving, with Cam trailing along, as the receptionist was saying weakly, “End of the hall, on the right.”
It wasn’t hard to find, especially since Beverly was standing in the doorway, her arms crossed, her eyes cold. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“Can we take this inside? Look, this isn’t official police business—but I need to talk to you.”
She wavered for a moment, looking briefly at Cam, then gestured toward the office, closing the door behind us after we’d all entered. We found chairs and sat.
“All right, why are you here?”
“I wanted to thank you,” I said quietly.
“For what?”
“For getting Cam out of whatever mess Will got him into. For bringing him home safe to me. You see, I do understand about brothers and loyalty. Look, I don’t want to get you into any trouble, but I need to know what happened.”
Beverly was silent for a long time, and I was beginning to wonder if she’d just throw us out. Finally she sighed. “Before I begin, I have to apologize to you, Mr. Dowell. You were a victim of William’s scheme, and I did what I could to protect you.”
Cam studied her face. “So you
were
the one who brought me back to Em’s that night, right?”
“I was. You didn’t remember? I persuaded Will that you were so addled that no one would believe anything you said, and then I got you out before he could change his mind.”
“You had that right. And thank you,” Cam said.
“And you came by the next day to make sure he was all right?” I asked.
She nodded. “I suppose I wanted to be sure that your brother had arrived safely. It was foolish of me, because I couldn’t exactly come right out and ask you about him. But I was concerned that he could have wandered off after I left him there and been hit by a truck or picked up by the police as a drunk, in his state. I’m afraid I’m not very good at planning this kind of thing, but I haven’t had much practice. In any event, I assumed that since you were there and did not appear distressed, that all was well.”
“Yes, thanks to you. So how did you get caught up in this mess, whatever it is?”
“I don’t generally see much of my ex-husband, but my brothers had told me something that troubled me, about Will trying to broker a deal for some stones, and I went to his house to speak to him about it. They said they had turned him down, but I didn’t want my brothers involved in his scheme, whatever it was, and I wanted Will to stop bothering them. When I went to his home, I discovered Mr. Dowell there. Will made some pathetic excuse that he was a tourist who wanted to experiment with mescaline, and Will was babysitting him through his trip, but I didn’t believe him. But since Mr. Dowell didn’t appear to be at any immediate risk, I took Will aside and confronted him with what my brothers had said. When he tried to explain, I told him he was a fool and that he should back out now before he got into any more trouble, much less drag my brothers into it, but then he said it was more complicated than that.”
“Did he tell you that there was a murder involved?” I asked.
Beverly looked down at her hands. “Eventually. He admitted that he had helped to dispose of a body. He claimed that the death was an accident and that he hadn’t been responsible for the death. All he had done was leave the body in the desert.”
“Did you know who the dead man was?”
“Will told me.”
“Did he tell you who killed the man?”
“He didn’t say. I didn’t press him—it seemed safer not to know.”
“And you didn’t ask?” I said, incredulous. I was going to have to pull the story out of her bit by bit.
“Not then. I didn’t want to be involved, and I wanted only to get Mr. Dowell out of there before Will made things worse. But he wanted to explain what had happened, and I let him—I thought it would calm him down.”
“And?” I prompted.
“Will gave me the story about the gem transaction. He claims he met Mr. Gutierrez at the bar at the casino on a slow night, and they got to talking. Mr. Gutierrez returned a few times to gamble and drink, and eventually he started complaining that he was in a financial fix. You know the old story about people spilling their secrets to bartenders? It’s true more often than you would think. Mr. Gutierrez told him all about his real estate investments and how they’d gone sour on him, and now he was in a real bind for money. And for once Will paid attention. He started asking questions, and no doubt gave Mr. Gutierrez a few free drinks, and eventually Mr. Gutierrez told him about this deposit of peridot that he’d found, that he hoped would be the solution to his problems. And of course, Will saw an opportunity, so Will offered Mr. Gutierrez a deal: Will would give him enough money to cover his most pressing debts
and
he would help Mr. Gutierrez sell the stones, for a share of the proceeds. Perhaps Mr. Gutierrez was overly optimistic about Will’s connections, or maybe he was just desperate, but apparently he agreed.”
“Did Will have the money?”
Beverly shrugged. “He has been working steadily, which hasn’t always been the case, but that was when he came to my brothers, to ask them to chip in. They claim they didn’t put up any money—they know Will and his schemes too well.”
“We know that the dead man did manage to pay off some of his debts, so I assume that money came from your ex-husband. What did Will hope for?”
“Money, in time. But he also thought he would be doing my brothers a favor, because they could get the stones for very little since Mr. Gutierrez was so desperate, and get them off the market. And it would eliminate Mr. Gutierrez as a potential competitor, help maintain reservation control over the stones.”
“But your brothers didn’t go along?”
“No. As I said, they don’t trust him. But then my brothers told me that this deal of Will’s had gone wrong somehow—although they thought he had just screwed up, as he so often has in the past.”
Since apparently I knew more than she did about what had gone on, I surmised that this was the point where Alex had gotten the bright idea that he could improve the stones and make more money that way, and gone off to cut his own deal. I wondered if Beverly’s brothers had in fact forked over any money, and how upset they would have been if the deal evaporated. Would it have been worth it to them to kill Alex?
“Did you get any details?”
“My brothers told me that according to Will the seller had changed his mind. I think that was all they knew.”
“Did you talk to Will about this?”
“I really didn’t care about my ex-husband’s business dealings—I just didn’t want him involving my family. But then he told me that it was Mr. Gutierrez—Alex—who was dead, whose body he had gotten rid of.”
“More or less—Alex was found within a day or two.”
Beverly shrugged. “He didn’t do a very good job, apparently, but that is typical of Will. He thought just dumping him in the desert would be enough—either he would never be found, or if he was, the authorities would believe he was just another illegal and wouldn’t try very hard to identify him. Many people get lost in the desert, and too many are never identified.”
I sorted through what she had told me. “Okay, so you’re saying it went like this: Alex and Will cooked up a deal. Will went to your brothers for financing, but they turned him down. So Will was possibly out of pocket to Alex, and then Alex cut him out and found another buyer. Then Will claimed somebody killed Alex and asked him to take care of the body. Do you believe that? Are you sure it wasn’t Will who killed Alex?”
Beverly looked me directly in the eye. “My ex-husband may be many things, not all of them good, but he is not a killer. He is weak and lazy and he likes to take shortcuts, but he would not murder anyone. Even at the casino, he relies on his size to intimidate people. He seldom uses violence. So, yes, I believe him.”
Was that wishful thinking on her part? After all, she had been married to him. And then I realized that whoever had asked Will to take care of Alex’s body had known about the gem deal, had known that Alex had a connection to Will. Which narrowed the field to a very few people: Beverly’s brothers, possibly the Madagascar dealer, and Denis. Beverly’s brothers might have had motive to get rid of Alex, for financial or tribal reasons. But why would Will not have told Beverly? To protect her feelings? It sounded as though there was little love lost between the brothers and Will. From everything Frank had said, the Madagascar dealer was an unlikely villain, and had little motive—the deal just wasn’t that important to him. Which left Denis.
But why would Denis have killed Alex? They were friends and partners. He needed Alex’s geology expertise to make this project work. He needed the money from the deal that Alex had set up. Alex had all the paperwork. Had Alex been cheating Denis? Did Denis benefit from Alex’s death? He’d claimed that the partnership was deep in the red on the real estate, and Alex’s death compounded that. So, why would he have killed him? It didn’t add up.
“Em, you still with us?” Cam asked. I must have zoned out while I tried to think.
“Oh, sorry. I was trying to sort out the pieces. Beverly, you went to your ex-husband’s place to talk about what your brothers had told you, and found Cam there. Obviously Will knew Cam was at Alex’s RV. Why didn’t he just get rid of Cam too? Or wait until he left?”
“He didn’t say. He knew about the location from Alex. The killer must have told him that Cam was there and asked him to dispose of him. I assume Will was supposed to kill him and get rid of the body, but Will couldn’t do it. So Will went out and collected Cam and then slipped him some peyote. I guess he thought he could find out how much Cam knew, how much of a threat he might be. Perhaps he intended to kill him, somewhere away from the RV, but lost his nerve.” She stopped and swallowed, then went on. “Em, Will is not a good thinker or planner. He saw what he thought was a financial opportunity with Alex, and he jumped on it. And that might have worked out just fine. It was only when things went wrong that I happened to hear of it from my brothers. So I went to confront him and discovered he had more or less kidnapped Cam.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
She looked away. “I was married to him once, and my brothers were involved. I may have concealed evidence, but Alex was already dead, and I couldn’t change that. I believed Will’s story. And Will had already taken Cam, but he didn’t know what to do with him. He was keeping him high on peyote until he could figure out a plan. Perhaps if it had been anyone other than my idiot ex-husband, I would have let the authorities handle him. But he is Apache, and his misdeeds reflect upon us all. And, selfishly, I thought perhaps my brothers would be implicated, although they had nothing to do with the murder, as far as I know. So I chose to make sure that Cam was not harmed, and then I returned him to you—I found your name and address among his things, and he babbled something about a sister, so I made the right connection. And that is all I know. Em, I couldn’t let your brother come to harm. He was an innocent, an outsider. And, to be honest, I didn’t want to see Will commit a deliberate murder. Alex’s death could well have been an accident, but it would have been something else if Will had killed your brother. I think he was relieved when I talked him out of it.”