“You think Denis killed Alex?” she whispered. “But how? I heard he was found out in the desert. Denis doesn’t know squat about anything outside of city limits.”
“Did he know where Alex’s RV was?”
“Yes. I made him take me out there once, because I wanted to see the place. I thought maybe it would be a safe place for Alex and me to meet, but it was too far out.”
What kind of idiot would visit her lover with her husband along? “So Denis knew where it was. He lied to the police about that.”
“Is that where . . . ?”
“No. The police have gone over it, and they didn’t find any evidence of murder. Did Alex keep the place neat?”
Elizabeth smiled, a small sad smile. “No, it was a mess. I mean, what do you expect, a guy roughing it? I liked it—I mean, Denis is such a nut about keeping things clean. With Alex I felt I could relax.”
So Denis was the compulsive one—and Denis would have been the likely candidate to clean up the RV after Cam was gone from it. “Does Denis have any friends? I mean, apart from Alex?” If Alex was his best friend, Denis had pretty poor taste.
“Not really. We live pretty simply. He goes to work, I go to work. We don’t see a lot of other people.”
“If he had to find someone to help him with something, uh, kind of illegal, who would he ask?”
Elizabeth looked at me blankly. “I don’t know. Besides, he never does anything like that. He doesn’t even cheat on his income taxes. I mean, he takes every legitimate deduction he can find, but nothing dishonest.”
“He keeps good records? He read all the stuff Alex gave him?”
“Of course.”
Another lie of Denis’s. “Elizabeth, are you sure you have no idea where Denis would go? Did he say anything the last time you saw him?”
“I told the police everything I knew. When we got back from your place last night, he came in, checked his phone messages, and he left in a hurry—he said there was something he had to clean up. I didn’t ask anything, because lately he’s been biting my head off at almost anything I say.”
That phone message might tell the police something, but it might take a while to track down who the caller was, and I had the feeling there wasn’t much time. Matt and possibly some other law enforcement types were at this very moment headed out to question Will Montoya, and they didn’t have all the facts.
“Elizabeth, did Denis ever mention a guy named William Montoya?”
“I don’t think so. No, wait—I think there was a phone message one day from someone with a name like that. Why?”
“Will was the one who dumped Alex’s body in the desert, but he said he didn’t kill him. If he knew Denis . . .” I let the thought hang in the air between us. I wondered how long it would take Elizabeth to draw the logical conclusion that her husband was a murderer, and what she would do then.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “It’s my fault that Alex is dead.”
“Nonsense. People have affairs all the time, and that doesn’t mean that someone ends up dead. Maybe Denis just snapped. But that’s his problem, what with everything else that’s been going wrong. I’ve got to make a call, before somebody else gets hurt.” If Denis had gone to “clean up” Will, thinking that the law hadn’t figured out Will’s role in all this, then Matt could be walking into a real mess that he wasn’t prepared for. I had to talk to him. If Will ended up dead before we got his side of the story, then Denis would be the only one talking, and he seemed to be pretty good at spinning the facts. I needed to let Matt know.
Easier said than done. I tried calling his cell, but of course he had no reception out there—I knew that from my own experience. But I knew the desk sergeant at police headquarters, and I was pretty sure she’d have a way to connect me to Matt.
“Mariana? This is Em Dowell. Do you know where you can reach Matt right now?”
“He’s out in Pinal County. Why?”
“Listen, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, but can you get through to him? There’s something he needs to know about what he’s walking into out there.”
“Uh, let me see what I can do. Can you sit tight a couple of minutes? I’ll ask him if he can call you.”
“Cell phone reception sucks where he’s going. Any way you can patch me through to his car?”
“Maybe. Let me find out.”
She put me on hold. I stared blindly into space, imagining worst-case scenarios. Denis with an Uzi, blowing away the entire police force of two counties before fleeing across the Mexican border. Denis slitting Will’s throat and then playing dumb and innocent, a role he knew well. Or maybe they were equal partners, and they would both come out with guns blazing. It all sounded absurd, but it was just within the far reaches of possibility. And if there was the slightest chance that somebody could get hurt or killed, then I had to tell someone. I could worry about looking foolish later, when this was all over.
Oh hell, Em—at least admit to yourself what you’re thinking.
I didn’t want Matt to get killed or hurt. I wasn’t sure when that feeling, that need to protect him, had happened, but there it was, and there wasn’t a bleeping thing I could do about it now except try to warn him about what he was facing. If I could.
“Em?” Mariana’s voice interrupted my maudlin fantasies.
“Yes?”
“Hang on, I’ve got you linked.”
“What?” Matt barked abruptly.
I tried to figure out how to condense what I knew into the fewest words. “Matt, I think Denis was in this from the start, including Alex’s death. He may have been working with Will all along. He lied to us.”
Matt said something that was lost in static.
“Matt? Did you hear me? Denis may have gone to Will’s to eliminate the last person who knows what he’s done. He’s playing us.”
“Got it. Gotta go.” His end of the line went dead.
I’d done all I could. Except to tell him to take care of himself, because I wanted him to come back in one piece.
Elizabeth was staring at me. “What happens now?”
“I have no idea.”
Chapter 32
It has been claimed that peridot calms madness, increases wealth, and prevents sudden death.
I’m not very good at waiting. Especially when I can’t control the situation.
I went home. I invited Elizabeth to come along, mostly because it seemed cruel to leave her there alone, wondering, but she declined. I didn’t press her.
The rest of the gang was assembled at my place, as if they knew there was some sort of showdown coming. I gave them a brief outline of what I’d learned from Elizabeth, and what I had deduced, and the fact that I had tried to warn Matt.
“Em? Lunch.” Cam thrust a sandwich in front of me.
Oh, right, food. I chewed without tasting. We’d finally accepted that no business was going to get done today, so Nessa and Allison had closed up the shop and were on hand too, and I noted with a pang that Cam and Allison were sticking to each other like glue, and even Nessa and Frank were sitting pretty close.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Nessa said. I didn’t ask what “it” was. I hoped she was right. Maybe everything would be neatly wrapped up with bows on it just in time for the five o’clock news. Or maybe the sheriffs and Matt would still be arguing about whose turf they were on, while Denis and Will in their ignorance cackled about their success in getting away with it all. Which they might yet, the way things were going. Too bad Denis was much smarter than I had thought. He’d fooled me, and I’d written him off as a neurotic professor with money problems. Great judge of character I am.
“So you think it may have been Denis who was the mastermind all along?” Allison asked, her eyes wide.
I nodded. “Maybe. Although I get the feeling that some of the people involved were just improvising. But I did tell Matt not to trust Denis, assuming he finds him. One thing that worries me—if Denis manages to shut Will up, then we’ll have only his story on how things happened. And he’s already proved he’s pretty smart, if he’s kept us all in the dark this long. Damn, I hate being taken in like that. I really believed he was a clueless bumbler.”
“It’s far easier for a smart man to play at being stupid than the other way around. And you had no reason to doubt him,” Allison said gently.
“Matt can handle himself, Em,” Nessa added.
Her perception startled me. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“Of course you don’t,” she went on. “Least of all Matt.”
Exactly. Nessa could see right through me. I wish I could see through me more often. I had been sucked in by Denis’s idea of treating stones. It had seemed harmless enough, and it meant a nice piece of change with little work attached. Who knew that it would lead to uncovering a murder and a kidnapping? Even though I had lived with the Gem Show for years now, I hadn’t realized how strongly people felt about sparkly colored things. But I really didn’t care about stones, so I hadn’t paid attention. If I had, would I have questioned Denis’s motives?
Time passed—one hour, then two. We talked, but each conversation petered out quickly. Cam had booted up his beloved laptop and was clicking away at it in a corner. After a while he reported, “I’ve been watching the local Internet news, but nobody’s said anything about arrests or solving a murder. Maybe that’s good news?”
“Or maybe Denis and/or Will has killed everyone,” I said glumly. “If they’d brought them in, there should at least be a mention.”
“Relax, Em,” Cam responded. “They’re probably arguing about who should do the paperwork.”
I stood up, unable to sit still any longer. “I’ll walk the dogs—I need the fresh air. You want to come, Cam?”
“Sure.”
Fine group we made, with the infectious fidgets. The dogs didn’t seem to mind, as long as they got attention. I handed Cam one leash, I took the other, and we each hoisted a dog and went down the stairs.
As we meandered down the block, I said, “You know, Cam, I don’t think we’ve had time to talk since all this whole mess started. You okay with your job?”
“Yeah. I told them I’d start next week. I said I had a few personal matters to take care of. They were cool with that.”
“How about finding a place to live?”
“I don’t plan to crash with you forever, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Hey, I’m happy to have you around, but things could get complicated.” I decided to stop beating around the bush. “Are you and Allison going to move in together?”
We walked a few more paces before he answered. “I don’t know. We’ve sort of talked about it, but you know she’s old-school Irish Catholic, and she has problems with the idea of ‘living in sin,’ as she puts it. I didn’t know anyone still thought like that, but I have to respect her position. I guess.”
“There’s one way to fix that, you know.”
“You mean get married?”
“Well, that would take care of the ‘sin’ part. You have a problem with that? Or does she?”
“I’ve been reluctant to bring it up. I mean, we haven’t been together that long, and then there was that whole Ireland mess. I haven’t wanted to press.”
I stopped to let Fred sniff a particularly interesting post. Gloria sat down to watch him. I turned to Cam. “Cam, you and I don’t talk about serious stuff too much, you know? But I’d hate to see you mess up with Allison just because you didn’t want to confront things. Life is short, and you never know what’s going to happen.”
“I know, Em. I know. But if we’re being open here, what about you and Matt?”
It was a fair question, even if I didn’t like it. “Right now we’re taking it one day at a time. We like each other, and I think we’re good together. But I also like my life the way it is, and I don’t see how we can put our lives together. It’s not like you and Allison.”
“Are you sure? Is it enough for you to get together now and then, when it happens to fit your schedules? You’re not getting any younger, Em. Do you want to be alone in ten, twenty years?”
I stared at him, and then I burst out laughing. “Listen to us. How did we come to this so late? We should have been having these discussions, oh, fifteen years ago.” Then I sobered. “Cam, I don’t think either one of us is qualified to give romantic advice, but we seem to be doing it anyway, so here it is. Allison loves you, you love Allison. That’s a pretty simple equation. Get married, shack up, whatever suits the two of you, and get on with it. There are no guarantees that you’ll be happy, but so what? You’ve got to try.”
“I will if you will.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“You just told me it was. You’re chicken.”
Maybe I was. Maybe I’d fought too long and hard to create the life I had, and I liked it, and I wasn’t about to change it for another person. Even one I cared about. And I did care about Matt, but I’d seen my parents’ empty marriage and I wasn’t convinced I was cut out for marriage or anything like it. And I knew Matt had been burned once by a bad marriage. But, to be honest, I had no idea how he felt about where we were going, and I had never asked. Maybe Cam was right: Matt and I were old enough to know our own minds, and maybe it was time to clear the air.
Assuming he came back.
No, I couldn’t think like that. He was a trained and experienced law officer, and he knew what he was doing. Plus he had help with him out there. “We should get back, in case there’s some news. But think about what I said, will you?”
“If you’ll think about what I said.”
“We’ll see,” I said. Mistress of noncommitment, that was me.
When we arrived back at my place, we ran upstairs to deposit the dogs. There was no news.
Chapter 33
Peridot will cause a beam of light to separate into two.
More hours passed. Once darkness had fallen, I
couldn’t stand being cooped up in my apartment. “I’m going out for some air,” I announced.
“You want company?” Cam volunteered.
“No!” I said, more sharply than I intended. “No,” I said more softly this time. “I just want a little alone time, okay? I’ll be right outside if anything . . . if anybody needs me.”
Trying to breathe.